


Loyalties

by Anonymous (Annevar44)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-18 03:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 34,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1414210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annevar44/pseuds/Anonymous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>note...</p><p>just figured out how to keep everything as "draft" (invisible to all but me) and am tediously changing story over to that, chapter by chapter.  So the first 7 chapters have gone invisible and the rest will soon follow. </p><p>...........................</p><p>The civil war in Arbeztan was short and brutal and mattered to almost no one.  </p><p>It's been over for four years.  </p><p>But to Angel Morjo, who was twenty-three when she crossed the border and a thousand years older when she got out, the horror has never ended.  She's safe and she's come home - but what happened there still follows her like a poison shadow, and she can't stop looking over her shoulder.  </p><p>Nor has it ended for James Callahan, who was posted to the US embassy in Arbeztan's capital during the war years.  He was present at the liberation of the Marchev internment camp, and the fallout from what he saw there derailed his career.  Four years later, he's desperate for a second chance.  </p><p>An assassination in Arbeztan's capital is about to bring two damaged people together again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	7. callahan/assassin?  Callahan/wife.  Callahan/Simontov

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything is falling into place for our hero. Except, don't look behind the curtain. Okay. He won't.

Callahan always started his day skimming the Daily Mirror's rabid editorial page, just to get it over with. This morning, though, he had something worse to face. Goggling out at him from his computer screen was the rubbery, puggish face of Manir Sdiraz, Arbeztan's most famous comic actor. Callahan had acquired a recording of "Twenty-Two," Sdiraz's one-man show, recently opened in Sokhrina and causing a sensation. The prime minister had quoted one of Sdiraz's lines during his Friday address to the senate. Staying current on Arbeztan's cultural phenomena was part of his job. Some days he hated his job with extra passion. 

Not being a native speaker, there were some Arbezi art forms he had trouble with - poetry, for example, and the morose art films Azor used to insist on showing him. However, he had no trouble understanding Sdiraz's brand of humor. The new show included all the comic's usual characters, and some new ones as well: a haranguing sickly mother in a kerchief, an effeminate gay, and a grasping perfidious old man who chased money and was hated by his own family. That last character had a Manzari accent, not heavy but not so faint his audience would miss it. 

Ever since Arbeztan's Jews had siphoned themselves off to Israel, for excellent reasons, the insults and whispers that could no longer be thrown at them started falling squarely at the feet of the Manzari, who made up about fifteen percent of Arbeztan's population. They had initially been viewed by the Arbezi majority as rural dolts, but were recast as conniving bloodsuckers; it was said they buried gold in treasure hoards beneath their barns and stables, and plotted disloyalty to the motherland. In the year leading up to the war, it became commonly rumored that they were, in fact, not pure Slavic - that their Black Sea ancestry had been polluted generations back by a Jewish stain. Callahan suspected that the stereotyping of the Manzari proved some universal truth about bigotry, or about the dark rivers that flowed secretly under the earth and turned the wheels of nationalism and could be manipulated easily by certain groups and leaders who had a deft touch for propaganda. 

Sdiraz cavorted across the screen, and his mind wandered. Early that morning, he had staked out a bench not far from Number 42 and had watched her come out of her door and cross the quad toward the language building. Cabrese had forbidden him from interfering with her as she "settled in," but he could watch from afar all he wanted. 

He worried about her. In the cafe in Morsetown her strangeness had been clear but not disturbing - she had been strange since they met, after all - but here at Theta he winced at how out of place she looked. Among the clean-cut uniforms and business suits that legged confidently past her, she looked almost like a street person who had wandered in by mistake. His eyes followed her across the quad, he saw more than one person glancing curiously after her. 

He had imagined, when he first knew her, that her problems would be transient. He saw himself lifting her back into the normal world that she had been pushed out of. He had an image of the all-American college girl she must have been - he could see her in a Prague cafe, tossing back her hair and flashing a sudden smile, a spring break innocent riding to her doom - and he was sure he could return her to that state. The VA would heal her injuries and get some nourishment into her. She'd settle down in an apartment in Virginia where he could keep an eye on her and help her get back on her feet. She would call him when her ceiling leaked or she couldn't figure out her taxes. Her haunted gaze would melt. He'd hold her through her nightmares. He had never had sexual feelings for her - she was all nerves and grime, her bones jutting out of her skin, and would have snapped like a twig in his arms. What he felt for her was stronger than lust. 

At Marchev, he came to spend every free moment beside her cot. Winning her over was like winning the trust of a wild animal. In the first week, she ignored him; later her peaked face would change subtly and lose its fearful vigilance when he approached. One day when he rose to leave, she reached for his hand. 

But she had not returned to an all-American girl. She had slit her wrists, become insane, and gone off to Boston, where she stayed scarred and kept to a small, scarred life. He had a second chance now, and he still wanted to rescue her. 

She was now in close quarters with some crack Theta linguist. She was probably pacing in her twitchy way, looking away shiftily while the linguist tried to talk to her. It occurred to him, for the first time, that she might snap - the pressure of the move and the new job might turn her back into the thrashing maniac he had glimpsed through a door in the psych ward. This would not help his reputation. If Angel floundered, Quentin would back away from responsibility and hang the loss on him. If he were allowed close to her, he was sure he could guide her and help her along. Instead, the only person who had any contact with her was Cabrese, maddeningly enough, who didn't care about her and didn't know the first thing about her. 

In other areas, wheels were turning. The previous day, he had been called to a meeting just outside Washington, where the building security guards went over his identification with unusual thoroughness and suspicion, and made two phone calls to confirm his identity. Inside, he sat at a conference table with men in suits and crewcuts. The discussion had covered details about the capabilities of the Arbezi military - not his area - and then turned to Simontov's relationship with the country's leading generals. Simontov's proposal was being seriously considered. He could see negotiations in Sokhrina happening soon. He could see himself at the table beside Erica Taylor, across from Simontov, with a company man from Specials looking on. 

On the screen, Sdiraz was doing a gymnastic display of backflips, and the audience was on its feet roaring with approval. The curtain came down, then rose. Sdiraz bowed, to more whoops and cheers that were nearly hysterical. He had barely paid attention to the show, but no way was he going to sit through it again. He had done his duty, sort of, and he still had the Daily Mirror to grind through. 

The phone rang. "It's my lucky day, sunshine," Corinne said. "Come on over and visit me at three o'clock. The bigga-man wants a word." 

He grinned into the receiver. "You gonna give me a hint what it's about?" She laughed. 

At the appointed time, he faced Quentin. His nerves had tightened like piano wires on the way over, and he had called on his company training to calm himself. All company recruits - even ones like him and Theresa, who were never going to see danger - were taught techniques meant to control fear in the event of arrest or interrogation. They were also useful when facing the boss, waiting on pins and needles for news that might make or break your career. 

The downside of suppressing one's emotions was that, when the news was terrific, you couldn't actually enjoy it like a human being. 

"All right," he told Quentin soberly. "When do I leave?" 

Quentin handed him a folder. He thanked Corinne on the way out. The first stirrings of happiness curled through him as he maneuvered his car out of the government lot. As he took the exit south off the beltway and hit cruise control, he was smiling. By the time he was ten minutes from home he had the radio turned to his favorite station and was banging on the steering wheel and singing along with "Hard Day's Night." 

They wanted him to stay in Sokhrina for six or seven weeks, but the trip was actually open-ended, meaning they'd consider giving him longer if he said he needed it. The concrete part of the job - the less interesting part - was to talk business with Simontov, assure him of America's good intentions, and promise that the proposal was being considered at the highest levels and so on. The main job was what he was looking forward to. He was under orders to cultivate the man, just as he had been sent years previously to cultivate Azor. He was supposed to reestablish congenial ties, talk about old times, socialize, and work his way into becoming a good and trusted friend. It would be a challenge, but he would succeed brilliantly. He was already working out his approach. 

He and Simontov would soon be drinking the usual toasts to their dead companion. Simontov must be hearing from all quarters that he wasn't the man Azor had been. Callahan would subtly convey that Azor's personality had been a liability; Simontov's less flashy but more genuine strengths would serve his country better. Simontov would advance the country and do great things. History would remember Azor as a celebrity; it would lionize Simontov as a statesman. 

Simontov would be realizing by now that there was no one in Sokhrina he could still trust. Everyone was either a grifter or competition or, like the Rachatan leadership, a powerful crony wanting his payoff. Callahan would come in as the outsider - the one man in Sokhrina who had no skin in the game and wanted nothing from the senator. They would go out together to the _gazhents_ , in a nod to former times, and Simontov would also be glad to recapture some of the glamor of the Azor years. 

Callahan considered himself decently smart and decently handsome, but he had only one gift that made him singular. He had discovered young how to feel people out and tell them what they secretly longed to hear. It was why he had been accepted into the Foreign Service with a test score that was passable but not stellar like Theresa's. It was why he had done so well in early years that the company recruited him. 

It came to him so easily that he didn't understand why everyone didn't do it. 

Theresa's car was not in the driveway when he got home. He wanted to do something special to celebrate his big news. The grill crossed his mind. Immediately he thought of cows, of slaughterhouses. Instead he ordered Chinese from her favorite place. He hummed as he put out wine glasses. Sokhrina was famous for its street-corner kiosks, where you could buy good bread and black-market _chivi_ if you were trusted not to be a spy for the cops. He would revisit the old stadium where the Sokhrina Lions played. The thought made him happy and regretful at the same time. He kept picturing Azor beside him, and had to consciously change the image to Simontov. 

Theresa came home at her usual hour, but she seemed distracted. She saw the Chinese and the glasses of wine. The bottle was her favorite, fifty dollars, Cab. Maybe he shouldn't have tried so hard. 

"What's this? Is it an occasion?" 

Her face did not change expression when he told her. 

"Hey, don't be too happy for me, or anything," he smiled. "It's nothing important. It's just the exact thing I've been hoping for." 

"I am happy for you," she said. "I'm also worried for you." 

He was a little put off. She should celebrate his success, which had been long enough coming. "It's big," he said, in case she hadn't understood. "It's a first step to getting back in. And I know you won't miss me." He kissed her. She was not very responsive, so it came off clumsily. 

She said she was glad if he was glad. She picked at the Chinese food. He felt irked. 

About halfway through the meal, she changed suddenly. She became animated, asking him what he would do in Sokhrina and whether he expected to see old friends. Obviously she had suddenly realized she was treating him badly. The mood between them lightened, and he made her laugh with some stories about life at the embassy and characters in parliament, and when the meal was over, she was smiling and he had completely forgiven her. 

"Seven weeks," she said, as they stood together at the sink, him rinsing while she dried. "You might come back to a whole different home. This is my big chance to put in granite countertops with no opposition." 

"I'll grant you a free hand," he said magnanimously. "But I'm capping you at eight thou." He ruffled her hair. 

The next days were devoted to preparations. His class was being taken over by Lydia Acheldt, another expert in eastern Europe, and they met to discuss his lesson plan. He told his MA boss that he'd be filing his weekly reports straight from Sokhrina for the next two months; this would give him better insight into the political climate. She remarked that she had already been told of his reassignment. "File the reports a day early so I get them on time."

On the third day, he packed his suitcase and confirmed his flight time. Then he called Paul Cabrese. 

Theta Block lay twenty miles down a wooded road from the rest of Theta base. The two installations were entirely separate: Theta base was managed by the State Department, whereas the Block was, as best he could tell, under military jurisdiction. A certain number of people worked at both places and traveled the road frequently. He had never had reason to pass the gates, but years ago, he had driven the road out of curiosity. It looked the way he remembered. He was struck once more by the foreboding solidity of the place, its blank brickface nearly devoid of windows. Against the lush, susurrous green of the Virginia woods, Theta Block was singularly gray and immobile. Even without the chain-link fence and the guards, no one could take it for anything but a prison. 

The outer gate was manned by serious-looking men in fatigues who checked his ID, motioned him out and patted him down. They searched his car as well, which he hadn't been expecting. He was directed to park at a nearby lot. After that there was an inner gate where again he was ordered to produce his ID. He was escorted inside, passed through a metal detector, then filled out forms and left his thumbprint at a desk, watched by a female guard behind a pane of bulletproof glass. His escort led down a hall to a room with dim light and a long observation window. Two people were seated at the window, wearing headphones and staring intently through the glass. One was Cabrese. 

Through the window he could see a bare room with a mattress on the floor. A young man was crouching in a corner, and a youngish woman - tall and fine-boned, with a boyish hairstyle he found attractive - was standing over him. Callahan could hear nothing, but her posture and expression made it clear she was berating him. The boy was hunched and had his arms wrapping his knees. His head was down. He had dark lank hair, unwashed. Suddenly he raised his head and looked toward the window. At the sight of his face, Callahan recoiled in shock. The boy was very young and very thin. And he had Angel's features. 

Callahan had been thinking as he drove over that he would hate Azor's assassin on sight, but now that he saw the creature, he felt something else. It was hard to imagine this boy pulling the trigger on Azor. His resemblance to Angel was uncanny - not so much the Angel of today, but the underfed, petrified prisoner he had met in the infirmary at Marchev. The boy was wearing a clean orange prison uniform, whereas Angel had been clutching at rags. That was the main difference he saw; other than that, they could have been sister and brother. 

Cabrese had noticed him and taken off his headphones. "Glad you made it," he said. "Have a seat." 

"Your boy looks bad," Callahan said. He could not take his eyes off the kid. "Are you feeding him?" He realized as he said it that this was an unprofessional question. Interrogations were necessary, and the boy's information would probably end up saving American lives. 

"You've noticed the resemblance," Cabrese said, ignoring him. "They've been landlocked for centuries in those mountains. Everyone's a cousin to some degree. Not a lot of genetic variation. I wonder if there's a problem with recessive diseases." 

The other person in the room also turned now, adjusted her headphones, and held up a hand irritably for silence. She was nearly fifty, he judged, with a patrician nose and an elegant manner. From behind he had taken her for a much younger woman. Her hair was eye-catching and worn in a young style: a high ponytail of creamy blond, like butter, clipped back with glittering black comb. He had seen her around Theta base and suspected they had been introduced before. He was on the point of asking Cabrese who she was, when she pulled off the headphones and shook her head. "I can't understand a word," she said. "She's got him riled up enough to talk, but I'm not even sure if he's saying words or only noises. You'll have to give me more time." 

"How much longer?" Cabrese snapped. "We're all on a deadline, Ms. Lund." 

"Two more weeks." She spoke dismissively. "Unless you can pull another Karthic translator out of thin air, you'll have to be patient until then. But I'll be back on Monday as usual." She snapped to her feet, giving Callahan an impression of spare efficiency, and strode out. Callahan was impressed. He had imagined that a woman, a mere linguist at that, would be awed and deferential around the great Cabrese. Since she worked at the Block and was privy to secretys, she must get a twice-yearly CDD herself. She must know exactly what a debriefer could do. 

Cabrese said, "Did you have any problems getting in the gate? They're strict about visitors' clearance, usually. I told them to expect you. I wasn't sure they'd listen." 

Callahan shrugged. He did not want to explain his special status. His conditional clearance came with an asterisk attached - meaning the guards at the gate had probably called Quentin before allowing him inside - and would expire in a few months if he didn't earn permanent reinstatement. "I'm leaving for Sokhrina tomorrow; I'll be gone almost two months. I came to see if I can contribute anything to your interrogation, before I go." This was not why he had come, of course. Cabrese would know it was not why he had come. But they were in the open world, not in the office in building 86, and there were forms to be observed that preserved normality. 

"Thank you. But as you can see, the interrogation hasn't actually started yet. The language barrier is still a problem." 

He stepped into it. "I'd like to see Angel before I leave. I think she'd appreciate a goodbye." 

"I'm afraid not. She's fine, I promise. But she's still settling in." 

The statement was calm and final. Cabrese was drawing the line: Angel was her handler's property, and Callahan was merely an old acquaintance, was nothing, and would be treated as nothing. Callahan itched to hit the other man. Instead he said. "Give her my best, then. I'll look forward to seeing her when I get back." 

"I'm not being capricious. The reason you're a danger to her is that she cares about you." 

All the way home, he cursed Cabrese to hell and back. 

He found Theresa out back on the little patio under the oak tree. She had work papers spread in front of her but as he approached, he saw her chin was propped in her hands and she was staring into the distance. He put his hand on her shoulder, but she didn't look at him. 

"He's not taking his pills," she said. 

"He told you that?" 

"As if. I went over there today after work, and I counted them. I filled the scrips for him two weeks ago and only a few pills are missing from each bottle." She looked helpless. "Maybe it's a memory problem. Maybe he just can't keep track of what to take when, and won't admit it." 

He kissed her hair. "I think you have to let him be. Also, hello." 

Tears started into her eyes. "Without the blood thinner, his risk of stroke is eleven percent per year. Can you imagine how he'd manage with a stroke? Maybe he's suicidal. Ever since Mom died..." Her voice trailed away. "He doesn't listen to me, though. I start talking and he tunes out. I can see it." 

Callahan understood what was being asked of him. "I'll talk to him." 

"You're leaving tomorrow morning." 

"I'll talk to him tonight." 

"You're an okay guy," she said. "I might actually miss you, a little." She looked at him for the first time and said, "I am happy for you, you know. And, I've decided I can live with it: being married to a real company man, if that's where this ends up. I wrecked things for you once already." She laughed. "So. Don't worry about me, is what I'm saying. I won't stand in your way." She stood and put her arms around him. He kissed her forehead, and they walked into the house together. 

She saw him off to the airport the next day. "Be careful," she said, holding both his hands. He understood what she meant. Not, _be careful; don't get hurt or lost or robbed._ She meant he should be careful of the company, of its tides and currents that might suck down a man's soul. Be careful of allowing Marchev to happen twice. 


	9. Cabrese meets angel.  Cabrese dissects Callahan at a CDD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And: enter the string-puller. He either cuddles kittens or he's a secret Svengali. You decide.

"Do you know why you're here?"

He looked at the woman in front of him. So this was Angel Morjo. He had first heard of her from James Callahan four years before, and had built an image of her based on that conversation: a young torture victim, starving and emotionally disturbed. He had imagined she would be as quick and nervous as a hummingbird. Seeing the real thing, he was taken aback by her appearance. She was almost an offensive presence: slovenly, hostile. She was too broad for her height, her stomach stuck out, and her baggy clothes were wrinkled. Her hands had a fine tremor. She met his gaze when she first slouched into the room, staring back at him in a challenging way, but it wasn't long before she looked away. She seemed more like a subject he might meet at the Block than a Theta employee. 

He waited her out. At last she said, coldly, "Standard procedure, I guess." 

"Pretty much. New employees get run through security check. Your name came up with an asterisk." 

Again she didn't answer.

"Busy few days for you. Leaving Boston, coming here, starting a new job. At least it's only seventy. Just wait until summer when you get to enjoy our famous Virginia sun. Did they find you a place to stay on the campus?" 

Silence.

"Angel, I know you just came from your security intake. This isn't anything like that. It's just you and me getting acquainted."

"You're some kind of psychologist," she said flatly. "I don't want to get acquainted."

Ah. So it was like that. 

"All right. Then we'll cut all the small talk and get to the point. I have your old records from the VA and St. Luke's. I have all the records Jamie Callahan collected on you, from birth to college age, when he was working to get you repatriated from Beztan. I know your background already." He was almost certain how she'd respond - and sure enough, she bared her teeth. Literally: her lips drew back for an instant, top and bottom, like those of any cornered primate showing aggression. He gave her a minute, then prompted her. "Anything you want to say?"

Shrug. She was miming indifference and doing a poor job of it. He could see her discomfiture, her mind whipping through a series of possible answers. She came up with: "It was a long time ago." 

"Not that long."

Giving up the attempt to stare him down, she shifted her gaze to a spot on the wall. "Hope it was entertaining," she muttered. "With photos, and everything." The corner of her mouth gave a dangerous jerk. She began jigging her foot.

"The records were pretty slim, to tell the truth. St. Luke's sent fifty pages, but all of it was one-line notes. 'Remains uncooperative. Declines to participate.' "

"Yeah. Well. Nothing's changed." 

He had the feeling she was playing a part. James Dean, maybe. "I'm actually not so interested in talking about your past - or anyone else's. You had a hard time but you moved on, which is the best thing you could have done. The past is only meaningful as it informs the present. You coming here and teaching Karthic, though - it might bring back bad memories."

"I don't have any memories."

"That's good. You can just come by and see me twice a week. To make sure it stays that way."

She flinched, clearly taken aback. Cabrese was enjoying this. It was nice to have someone - for once - who hadn't been schooled in the liar's game, who had so little guile that she wore her responses openly. "That's not necessary," she said. "Really. I'm fine. I'll be fine."

"Actually, yes. It's necessary, because it's going to be in your contract. Twice a week. As a condition of employment."

A succession of emotions flash across her face like neon signs. "Is that even legal? You're kidding me."

"It's legal. It's common here. It's why I have a job. It's the reason for this office." He locked her eyes. "You understand you're in a whole new world. It's a government installation, there's a military culture here, there's weapons, there's guards, there's a focus on security. And your employer, who is also my employer, has a certain way of doing things. " He tried charm. "I'll be honest - you're probably one of the most interesting people I'm going to get to meet all year. I want things to work out so that you can stay and I can get to know you. They'll be bringing you your contract later today. Please sign. I promise I'm not so terrible."

He had her. She had nowhere else to go but back to Boston where she was, reportedly, being threatened by a bogeyman from her past. "Whatever," she said. 

He unlocked his bottom drawer and pulled out a small bottle. It was a sample bottle; there were only eight pills inside. "You're having a hard time sleeping, aren't you? This will help. You can use it in the day, too, every eight hours or so. Lorazepam. It's like Valium; it'll help your nerves. Take one now, if you want." She looked sullen but took the bottle.

"Thanks for coming." He stood and held open the door. "I'll see you in a few days."

She stomped out gracelessly. He watched her go, with misgivings. With curiosity.

.

He would be spending the afternoon with James Callahan. They were going to meet in D building first, to review the film of the Mirtallev shooting. He accessed the files on Callahan and spent the next hour reviewing them - both the official file that was accessible to the bosses, and the more complete, less official version that was maintained by debriefers, for debriefers. His one prior official meeting with Callahan had shown him the man at his worst and weakest, which was very useful in understanding him. But he needed a more complete portrait. What were Callahan's strengths; what motivated him; how he would act under different conditions and stressors? He saw the man around Theta occasionally, using walking to or from the Cultural Studies center or the parking lot, and had a general sense of how he was regarded on the base. He was physically imposing: a big bluff guy, the kind who superficially was what people called "a man's man." It would be interesting to see him again. Cabrese was looking forward to it.

When he arrived in D building's main viewing room, the overhead lights were off and the footage was already playing. Callahan was seated in the back row with the remote in his hand. Evidently he had arrived early and started running the film on his own. 

"Hello, Jamie," he said. 

Callahan answered without turning around. "I've been waiting for you. Have a seat. Been going over it a few times already." He stood and held out a hand. If he was discomfited by meeting like this, he was hiding it well. 

Callahan provided commentary as they ran the footage from the beginning. "Azor looks like his usual self. He's flirting with that hotel girl, see it? If anything's wrong, he hasn't noticed it yet. Here, this is Chogav, the personal bodyguard. He crouches down at just the wrong time. That's the shooter coming into the frame. This other man off to the left, that's Damiric - he's another of Mirtallev's people but he's less of a goon; more of a crowd-control man. His main job was to run interference and keep people away from Azor when he wanted to be left alone. Chogav was an amazing guy; Arbeztan's version of the Terminator. But see, he's distracted by something on the ground; that's why he doesn't get his shot off in time to stop the assassin. Could be just bad luck. Or, could be he was bribed? Or blackmailed into allowing the hit. Or, could be he wanted Mirtallev dead for some reason of his own. Like maybe Mirtallev had slept with his wife, which, not a smart way to treat your bodyguard, but with Azor, not completely out of the range of possibilities." He smiled a little, but a look of sadness followed swiftly.

"The assassin will arrive at the Block tomorrow. I will allow him some time to recover from his wound before I start questioning him. But when I start, I will want you to listen to his account of the shooting - to see if it rings true with what you know of Chogav and the security arrangements. Also, it will take a while to fix the language barrier, with the Morjo woman's help."

Callahan looked as if he wanted to say something, but at that moment his phone rang. "Yes. Four o'clock today? Well, no, but I had plans. All right. Of course." He stared at the phone after he hung up, then put it back in his pocket.

Cabrese said, " 'Four o'clock, building 86." Callahan was staring at him. He shrugged apologetically. "I saw your name on my schedule this morning. My office is room 202, if you've forgotten."

For a brief moment Callahan remained silent, his face betraying no disturbance. Then he said, "My last CDD was four months ago. I'm not due for another until June. And I've been seeing Johanssen."

"Well, as you know, the company works in mysterious ways." He glanced at his watch. "It's almost three. Let's break for now. You'll need some time to prepare."

.

Callahan knocked at his door at the appointed hour. He looked more guarded than earlier, but that was only to be expected. "Been a while," he said, dropping himself onto the sofa.

"Since we met here, yes. Four years. You'd come back from Arbeztan six weeks before."

"That's right."

"You've been with Dr. Johanssen since you moved to Media. What do you think of him?"

"You want the diplomat's answer or the honest one?"

"Which do you want to give me?"

"Johanssen's a smart man. No sense of humor. But at least he doesn't usually make me want to put a bullet through his forehead, which is pretty much where I set the bar for these things."

"Excellent." He smiled. "Shall we get started?"

"You gonna wire me up?" Callahan was reaching for his shirt buttons.

"I usually don't bother. But the equipment's in the back if you want it that way. Your choice."

A shrug. It was a shade too elaborate to be honest; unless, of course Mr. Callahan had spent part of his youth someplace like France. Cabrese chided himself for not reviewing his subject's background. He was getting sloppy. Too sure of himself, was the problem. Smug.

"Johanssen always wires me," Callahan said. "That's the only reason I asked. I don't care either way."

"Ah, well. Dr. Johannsen doesn't have my infallible intuition." He smiled. "So. Let's go back to when we met. You were just back from Arbeztan. War just over, treaty signed. You were troubled by what you'd seen at that detention camp. What was it called?"

"Marchev."

"Marchev. You felt guilty. Complicit in what happened there. That still a problem for you?"

"Nope."

Cabrese waited. The clock ticked ostentatiously. Finally Callahan sighed. "Not gonna pass me on that one, are you?" Cabrese smiled but said nothing. Tick. Tock. Tick. Callahan fidgeted. "Okay," he said. "The truth, then."

He fell silent again, but Cabrese could see him preparing himself, shedding the social demeanor he'd worn into the room. Readying his mind for the unavoidable business ahead of him. After seventeen years at the company, Callahan would know that honesty was not only the quickest route out of a debriefing, but the least embarrassing. Better to give it up willingly and maintain some control, then take a beating and end up a shaking mess. "Take your time," he said kindly. "Tell me when you're ready."

A faint sheen of sweat had appeared on Callahan's skin. It was unusual for a veteran to have this much trouble getting started. But finally he rubbed his hands over his face and said. "All right. I just, uh. I have a chance at getting back in. Getting out of Media Analysis. A field which is - you may not believe this - actually way, way too exciting for me. And I don't want to mess up my chances by saying the wrong thing here."

Ah. "Understood. I know about your opportunity. But of course you know that holding back will give you a less favorable review. Noncooperation being, next to mental instability, the worst thing I can say about you."

"Of course." Callahan drew a breath. He launched into it. "Your question: do I still think about Marchev? Answer is yes."

"But you were a thirteen-year veteran at that point. You'd felt responsible for deaths before."

"It was just a matter of scale. I;d had sources die, individuals - mostly people who knew the risks and were selling secrets for money. But Marchev was-- I'd never seen anything like that. It stank like rotting meat, under the ground."

Johanssen's notes were thorough; he and Callahan had discussed Marchev many times already. It was good form to start the CDD with a softball topic and then ease into the hard things. 

Callahan continued. "After a while I made peace with it. That's the job. I did good work in Ambassadorial. I did what I was told. So I learned to live with it."

"Ah. You just follow orders."

Callahan thought a moment. Then he said, "Okay, wait. You know it's more than that."

"Tell me." Every employee constructed his own personal set of excuses to shield himself, so he could keep thinking of himself as a good person. The ones who couldn't do that were the ones that cracked - some toward the wilder extremes of escapism, some toward depression, numbing agents and suicide. Others grabbed hold of some other ideology that promised atonement and generally led to treason. Less dramatically, but very rarely, an employee took the exit of Callahan's wife. 

"All right." He concentrated. "It's like this. I followed orders at Arbeztan, just like everywhere before, because I believe in a strong America. If we stay strong, it's good for the world. Equality, democracy, capitalism, rule of law, freedom of political speech and protection for the little guys. Light of freedom shining across the planet, for all those huddled masses; corny, okay, but I believe. I look out across the world, knowing what I know, and I see everyone else out there trying to get an edge. They're planning violence, dealing wepaons, gathering intelligence, making backroom deals to weaken us. So we have to play the game. We play it, because everyone else plays it. And the game is played dirty. If I'm the one playing, then it doesn't have to be other people getting dirty. It doesn't have to be my wife, who, as you know, doesn't have the stomach for it. So I do my job. America stays on top. And if there's a little blood, I wash it off and go on."

"And if you had to do it again? Another time, somewhere else in the world?" 

"Well, I won't lie; I hope I never have to. But I've done a lot of things, through the years - for the job, for the country - things that I wouldn't do for any other fucking reason in the world. I've proved to myself that I can do those things. I'm not soulless enough to be fine with it, but I've seen the worst. And I still believe in what we do. I want to keep doing it." 

"All right. I'll take that."

"Good. Because it's the truth. What's next?" 

Cabrese smiled. "You'll have seen this one coming: How's your wife?"

That produced a wry grimace. "Yeah, I gotta tell Theresa how goddamn popular she still is. Everyone's always asking me about her."

"You resent that?"

"That one's easy. Yeah, I do resent it. I resent having my loyalty doubted because of what my wife - who, God knows, I cannot control - chose to do in a moment of ideological passion four years ago." His anger was nearly rancid. That was other reason for debriefings, one no employee would admit to: they were rough but they were therapy. They let a man say what he wasn't allowed to say anywhere else.

"Remind me why you got moved out of Ambassadorial."

Callahan rolled his eyes, but he told the bare facts well, without shirking responsibility. "And I told her that I'd known about it all along - the paramilitary groups, what they were doing. The fact that Azor was involved up to his neck. Theresa was-- She reacted strongly. Quit the company that day. I was blamed for breaching security by telling her - and thus alienating her and creating a security risk. Poor judgment, you people said. Violation of the need-to-know principle." He was getting heated. "And then, of course, I remained suspect because I was now married to a red-tagged woman." He leaned forward. "It was you people tagged her. Then you blamed me for not throwing her out."

"Defiant," remarked Cabrese. "So you still don't you think those concerns were valid?"

"Understandable? Yes. Valid? No." Callahan's tone was becoming confrontational. "It's been four fucking years I've been stuck in M.A. I did _nothing_ wrong; she had clearance; she was my wife for God's sake; I had _no_ reason to believe--"

"You can stop now. Stand up, please."

Callahan stopped hard. like a dog yanked back by its chain. His internal struggles showed in his expression. Then he got to his feet. 

Cabrese was within his rights to command a subject to stand. Some debriefers went farther. Nunez liked to have troublesome ones raise their arms overhead, a position of surrender and vulnerability. Since subjects were evaluated on cooperativeness, they could not refuse. It was not a technique any debriefer used lightly: it risked leaving the subject feeling humiliated and resentful, which was counterproductive and undermined employee loyalty. But he had a good feel for Callahan. The man would respond well to a sharp, brief reminder of his place and obligations. 

He watched Callahan's face twitch a couple times and then smooth itself into compliance. 

"Take your seat." 

He gave Callahan a moment and then returned to his line of questioning. "Ideological passion, you said. Is that how you see it? She quit in a moment of passion?"

"Something like that, yes."

"From her file, I wouldn't have guessed she was a woman who let emotions guide her. She sounds more like a planner. Meticulous."

Callahan laughed and relaxed a little. "You don't know her. She'll fool you. A woman of depth and mystery." It was a surprise that he spoke so warmly of the woman who'd wrecked his career. "She's a planner, but she's a lot of things. She's more than that."

"How about forgiving - is she that?"

"No. Hell, no. Well -- maybe that's unfair. Forgiving, maybe. But forgetting? That'll be the far side of never."

"Then she won't be happy if you end up going back into the ambassadorial sector."

"We talked about it. She says it's up to me." But he looked down as he said it. 

"You find yourself wondering if she means it."

"Trying not to think about it until I have to."

"If you go back, are you going to be able to keep secrets from her, this time around?"

"Don't you think I've kept a million secrets from her? Seventeen years since I was recruited."

"You ever think about divorcing her?"

Callahan flinched. The question had hit a nerve. "What is that, now?" he snapped. "Your professional recommendation? Is the company meddling with my family now?" 

"Defensive," said Cabrese. "Take a moment. Relax. Don't fight."

Callahan blinked and sat back. "Right," he muttered.

Debriefers loved veterans. Someone like Callahan had been around the block enough to develop his own unique problems, rather than the prosaic ones that every first-year trainee had to be guided through: fear of failure, of discovery, and so on. Better yet, Callahan knew what a CDD required. He was long past the futile show of resistance that young employees clung to. Callahan would probably be done in under an hour - whereas a first-year trainee took an average of twelve hours for the same process. A debriefer had to hang in for as long as long as it took, patiently rejecting every unacceptable response - lies, evasions, argument, anger, humor, stubborn silence, attempted elopement, tears, threats, pleas, violence. First-years were told this plainly and repeatedly. "A CDD is a maze and you're the rat. The only way out is the path of candor. Everything else gets you no closer to the exit. Remember that the whole time we stay here, the debriefer is getting paid. And you're just continuing to prove you're too chickenshit to tell the truth." 

Callahan had shed another layer. He looked vulnerable and intent and ready, a diver on the ten-meter platform. Cabrese would have to be careful not to scar him. "All right," Callahan said. "I'm sorry."

"I asked whether you thought about divorcing Theresa. You got angry. Let's pick up from there. I wasn't making a recommendation; I was asking a fair question. You two, you met in foreign service training. You were in roughly the same line of work; you shared certain beliefs. An average man would now be thinking, she's wrecked all that. Got herself red-tagged, become a millstone to your career. You resent her for it; you're growing apart. You still believe in honor and country; she doesn't. You must be asking yourself, why not cut her loose?"

"Oh, God," Callahan muttered. "True, true, and undecided." He closed his eyes. "But, I don't think that's the company's business."

"I'll leave the details off the record," said Callahan quietly. "You still have to answer."

"All right. You want to know." He swallowed, making a choking sound. "I thought about it. Sure. A lot, four years ago. Sometimes I still do." He clenched his fists, then opened them hard so the tendons stood out on the backs of his hands. "Leaving her would improve my chances with the company about a thousand percent; I know that. But I don't want to do it."

Vanity and self-delusion were the cause of most struggles in this room. But the struggle of a man at odds with himself - that was rarer and deserved respect. "Okay. But you're going to have to explain that."

Callahan raised himself up. "How about this?" he said wearily. "I love my wife. I love my country. I loved the ambassadorial sector. And I'm just enough of a selfish, ambitious bastard to think I can have all three of those things. Like I used to."

"Hmm."

"Did I pass?" Callahan demanded. "I better pass on that one, because, I'm telling you, I got nothing else. I can't explain it any better. I want to let her go. Get back on the job. But I can't." Cabrese waited. "Look, she and I both know I can't talk shop with her. Ever, for the rest of my life. For seventeen years we were in the same line of work and it breaks my fucking heart that that's over, but it is and we both get it. I'm not a goddamn traitor and neither is she, and neither of us tells secrets. You people can come bug our bedroom if you want - assuming you aren't doing that already. I warn you, though: we've been married almost twenty years; you're not gonna hear anything too entertaining."

It was enough; it was an honest outburst, and Cabrese laughed. The man deserved a reward. "Yes. You pass. And the company has couples therapists if you want a referral. Sex therapists, too."

Callahan settled back onto the sofa, weak but grinning with relief. "Fuck you. Next question." 

"Now we come to the interrogation you've been assigned to. You've never helped on one, never seen one. True?"

"Ah. That would be, actually - false." Cabrese hid his surprise as he waited. "In Sokhrina. Mirtallev showed off his dungeon to me one time." He shifted uncomfortably. "He sprung it on me. Told me we were going to an underground boxing match. So, we're downtown, he takes me into a big solid-looking building, it's unmarked; we go through three security checks, then boom. Turns out he's taken me to the GC. _Gosurnyesk chudrak_ \- means federal internment facility." Callahan chewed the inside of cheek. "He kept me there for a couple hours. Had me watch a prisoner getting worked over. A Karth, actually."

"You don't look like you enjoyed it."

"Cant say I did."

"Tell me what you saw there."

"Bunch of goons beating a man up." He shrugged, or tried to. "Man was doing a little yelling. It was nothing. Not too bad."

Cabrese waited. Callahan suffered. Finally Cabrese said, "You know, we can sit here a long time. I've done twenty-three hours at a stretch."

Callahan looked at him. "Yeah, well. It was pretty bad." He laughed shakily. "Pretty fucking bad."

"You should have told someone that. Years ago."

"Can't tell you people all my secrets, doctor. Gotta remind you that you aren't as all-seeing as you'd like to believe."

He was right, of course. Every subject got some things past a debriefer's radar. Lies of omission were the most common and hardest to detect. Some testers favored wiring their subjects; Cabrese hated it. His statistics were as good as anyone's, and that's all the company cared about. Poor Johanssen, on the other hand, had just lost a subject to suicide - worse, she had left a note explaining that for over a year she'd been blackmailed by one of her sources. Waking up to news like that was every debriefer's nightmare. It was Johanssen's second major screw-up in six years. The company had him on probation. 

"So. We've established that you're not a big fan of torture, which is good, because your government doesn't like to keep psychopaths on the payroll. You have any nightmares afterward?"

"For a while I did. Not anymore."

"How do you see your role in the interrogation of the Karth boy?"

"Is he a boy?"

"About seventeen."

"Oh, for Chrissake. Just... Just tell me that we're not gonna rip his toenails out with pliers, because, you know, I really didn't enjoy that part. Or the electrodes. Testicles. Eyeballs. I could have done without pretty much all of it, come to think of it."

"Are you afraid of being tortured, Jamie?"

That produced a flat stare; a brick wall came down hard. "I passed my coursework during training. I passed all my clinicals. I've passed the refreshers twice a year like everybody else."

"Not what I asked."

Callahan closed his eyes, opened them. "What were we talking about?"

"You, in an underground cell, bunch of men holding you down; pair of pliers and they're starting on your fingernails. Got a knife, and they're going to do your eyes next. You're begging them to kill you but you know they never will."

"Oh, yeah, that. Okay. So. Torture." He was showing psychomotor signs, all of them, and he knew it, knew Cabrese saw it, knew it was a lost cause. He threw his hands up. "Yeah, you got me. I'm afraid of it. After what I saw. Call me crazy." He shook his head. "Ah, fuck. I just blew it. Didn't I."

"You didn't blow anything. If you do get back in the game, though, I'll have to recommend you for remediation. Do you know what that entails?"

"I can guess."

"Desensitization is a proven method. I've seen it work hundreds of times. Even on long-term victims."

"Really, and does it work on eyeballs? I guess it must. Because, if the company puts my eyes out, I'll have nothing left to worry about." He rubbed his chin. " Jesus."

"You could stay in M.A., you know. It's a good job. Steady. And someone has to do it."

"Oh, hey. Now you're talking true torture." After a moment he said, "I thought we were talking about Mirtallev's assassin. Not about my humiliating psychological weaknesses."

Cabrese moved on. Any idiot could pound a man's weak points until he turned into a quivering, and useless, heap of jelly. The interrogator's art lay in setting the stage, creating the right frame of mind to make the subject cooperative, and then getting the information that mattered. He had been trying to get this point across to his current trainee for months without success. "I can promise you I won't be torturing the boy. Sleep deprivation and environmental manipulation, yes. But mostly what you'll see is me running a game on him, which as we both know is what I do best. Do you think you'll be up for it?" Callahan nodded. He was looking steadier. "The Block isn't pleasant - not for the prisoners and not for the interviewers. If we liked it, we'd be monsters. And now, changing the subject: I appreciate your help with the film of the assassination. Your inside knowledge is going to be a great asset to me."

"You're flattering me," said Callahan. "Kissing my assets. You just want to get my mind off this subject of eyeballs."

"Yes. Is it working?"

"It's goddamn bush league, is what it is, doc. You're insulting my intelligence." 

Cabrese smiled. "Getting close to the end. You tired yet?"

"Yes."

"Excellent. Next topic: your old friend Azor Mirtallev. Dead. What do you think of that?"

"What do I think of it." He blew out his breath. "I think if anyone deserved it, he did. And, uh, I think the world is a smaller, way more boring place with him not in it."

"Go on."

Callahan swallowed. "I didn't believe it when I heard. I mean, you never believe those things on the first day; it has to sink in, you know?" Cabrese nodded. "But even later. Mirtallev, he was... larger than life. So yeah. It hit me pretty hard. Guy was a bastard but, you know. He was my friend."

"So. Tell me about him."

Callahan stared into the distance, memories of a fallen Camelot shining before him. "You don't really want to know. Do you?" 

"I want to know about you. So yes, I want to know about him."

Callahan groaned. "Oh Christ. Where to start. Azor Mirtallev." He tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. "Azor Mirtallev. He was a fucking lunatic. Loyal, though. Shirt off his back. Could tell a joke better than anyone, keep you laughing all night. Center of attention. Loved it when the joke was on him. He made everything funny. Listen: this one time we were out at a casino, one of the ones his people owned. And he went off to talk up a girl. Came back staggering, doubled over, hands cupped over his balls. I jumped up. "Azor! Azor, what the fuck?" "She shot me, brother! Took them both off, one shot. Chogav! Jamie! Karel!" Then he crumpled up at my feet, rolled onto his back. Wearing a suit, naturally, that cost half a million rachki. Everyone in the place was staring, shouting - _Call someone! Mirtallev's been shot!_ Chogav roaring, "Call emergency! Lock the doors! Lock the doors and I find this girl!" Callahan laughed at the memory and shook his head. But the hilarity went out of him quickly. "Not so funny now."

Cabrese was silent. After a while Callahan went on. "He was like a king. Made everybody feel like a king. Made me feel alive. Does that sound weird?" He looked to Cabrese, who shook his head. "Azor was a guy who made every girl feel like a supermodel, even the ugly ones. The men in the cigarette kiosks loved him; everyone loved him. Except, of course, for the millions who wanted him dead." He looked at Cabrese. "I've been everywhere, you know? I've met a lot of charming monsters; most monsters have a charming face they trot out for special company. But he was different. He was a good man who got into a bad line of work. He needed a fast life, I think, couldn't stay away from it. So he went where the excitement was." 

"Why did he take you to his dungeon, that time? Was it a threat against you? A test?"

"No. God no. He wasn't like that. He knew it was a terrible place. But-- it meant something to him." He looked up. "He asked me afterward, what I thought of it. He didn't have to ask; he could see I was about to vomit. I told him he shouldn't have brought me. And he-- he apologized. He meant it, too. He was sorry he'd made me watch, but he hadn't done it by accident, either. I mean, he knew from the start that I would hate it. He said, 'But I had to show you. So that now you can go home and think. And tomorrow you will please just tell me: are we still friends?'" Callahan looked around, then shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. He was crazy. He was terrible. I miss him."

"And when the next day came, what did you tell him? Still friends?"

Callahan nodded slowly. "Better than ever." He twisted away suddenly and put his hands up to shield his eyes. "Ah, fuck." Cabrese waited. Callahan stayed like that for a minute, face hidden in shadow. Then he swung back to face forward. "We gotta be just about done, doctor."

Cabrese shook his head. "Last topic. What do you think it will be?"

He waited. Callahan waited. Cabrese could see the moment when Callahan gave up his attempt to stare him down and started trying to distract himself from the rising tension. Some people pictured a place they knew and worked at recreating it in their minds, every twig on every tree. Some people did math in their heads. Cabrese gave him ten minutes, which was enough to bring most subjects almost to the breaking point and looking for a way out of the hole they'd dug themselves into. Then he said, "This is where I remind you that your superiors will soon be reading my impression of, among other things, your willingness to cooperate with challenging parts of the assessment."

"I'm not trying to be uncooperative. I just don't want to play guessing games. You want to start, you can start." 

"Okay. Four years ago. You got in over your head with Angel Morov. Agree or disagree?"

"Neither. I have a question before we go any further down this road."

"Shoot."

"Four years ago, you and I met. I told you some things. But those things remain confidential. That was an EDD, and the rule is, problems volunteered by an employee during an EDD stay off the record forever. I came forward; I did the right thing. Today, this is a CDD - this is for my file - but when it comes to Angel, you still can't touch me. No matter what I say, don't say, or refuse to say about her - you can't put any of that in my assessment. You can't."

"You want a review of the confidentiality rules governing employee-driven debriefings."

Callahan nodded. "Damn straight."

"All right." He leaned forward. "You're pretty much right. Here's the background: The company, not being stupid, knows that employees are human. You're also special. Each of you has skills and experience that makes you irreplaceable. So when you have problems, they want you to ask for help and not go off the rails. Hence, the employee-driven debriefing. When you ask for an EDD, you're awarded permanent confidentiality on whatever issue you raise. Other debriefers can see EDD records, but in your official file, the bosses only see the date of the request, the date of the EDD, and the name of the debriefer. And as you correctly stated, confidentiality applies even if the topic is raised during a company-driven debriefing like this one. I have to add, and this should go without saying, that the rule of confidentiality is waived when the debriefer has gray-level concerns - that is, when we're talking about infractions that require suspension or termination. So far so good. You are familiar with these rules."

"Yes. Confidentiality forever. That's what I'm saying."

"But now, listen carefully, because here's the other side of the coin: When I send my report to the boss later today, it will include an assessment of your entire performance, start to finish, no topics excluded. So while I won't mention your past problems with Angel, I might find myself reporting, for example, that I found you secretive. Or uncooperative. Or that, concerning an unnamed topic, you proved emotionally unable to withstand the rigors of strenuous questioning."

He waited for this to sink in. Callahan stared. He started to say something, then he stopped, then he went back mentally over Cabrese's words. "Wait," he said. "Run that by me again." Cabrese did.

Callahan worked it through. It was possible to see him going over the words, looking for a loophole. Finally he shook his head in a kind of blind amazement. "So," he said. "Let me understand. Because I asked for an EDD four years ago, I put myself on the hook. You can question me about her. I have to answer. I have to satisfy you that I'm candid and stable and all that other crap, or you'll hang me out on my CDD. You'll fucking hang me out."

Cabrese felt sympathy. "Yes. That is how it works."

"But I came to you! I didn't have to tell you anything. If I had known--" He made an inarticulate sound. "You people. I can't believe you."

"Try to see it from--"

"No! I believed what I'd been told. 'The company has our best interests at heart, ask for an EDD, you'll get confidentiality;' what a fucking load of-- And you, when I walked in four years ago, you didn't warn me. And like an idiot, I walked right into it. I trusted you."

"It's not a trap. It's a protection, for the company as well as you. This way, when an employee has a problem, his debriefer can ensure his ongoing well-being. As well as making sure it never crosses into gray-level behavior."

Callahan nodded. "You are a complete bastard."

"I have a job to do, Jamie. Like you."

"So Johanssen knows?" Callahan's eyes were still roving, looking for something to latch on to. "But he's never mentioned her to me; not in four years."

"He saw it as a personal matter, unlikely to affect your work in M.A. Now she's at Theta. Things are different."

"Jesus, Jesus, Jesus." He pounded his fists into his thighs. "I thought I was _safe,_ you know. Because of the EDD rules."

"I understand. But it is what it is. And here is my question for you now. Did I help you four years ago? You were in very deep. You asked for an EDD and we talked. I helped you look at the problem from different angles. We talked about the choices before you. I think in the end I helped you. But I look at you now, and I think you're in trouble again. So. Let's get started." 

Callahan struggled for a long time. Finally his shoulders slumped. "Okay." He still looked bewildered. "Do it. Just, do it. Like I have a choice? I want to keep my job. I'll answer."

"We are starting where we left off. Four years ago, you were in over your head with a young woman. Angel Morov. Agree or disagree?"

"Oh well, 'over my head.' I don't know if I'd go that far."

"You know, of course, that there's a recording of the EDD. For my use only. I pulled it out this morning, put it in the player. Maybe we can turn it on. Revisit your feelings at the time. Get a clearer memory." He nodded toward the sound equipment in the corner. Callahan recoiled. There was a pause.

"No," he mumbled at last. "Not necessary."

"Okay then. I'll go on. Four years ago; over your head. You were just back from Arbeztan. You had trouble at Marchev, trouble with your job, trouble with your wife. She turned your life upside down. You lost your clearance and were transferred into MA. Ms. Morjo was at the Roanoke V.A., though she wasn't a veteran - you had pulled strings to get her a bed. You were driving there every evening after work, and lying to Theresa about it." He gestured. "Your turn. What happened next?"

"She cut her fucking wrists." 

"Go on." 

"The hospital called me. I was the only emergency contact. They told me about it. They were going to transfer her out. To a psych hospital." 

"Yes. St. Luke's."

"Yes."

"And that's when, to your everlasting credit, you asked for an EDD. Do you have anything you want to add, before we go on?"

Callahan, beaten, shook his head. 

"She was taken to St. Luke's as an involuntary hold. You came to me the day they transferred her. You were very off balance. My advice at that time was that you should stop seeing her immediately. Did you listen to me?"

Callahan shifted. "I listened to you. About a lot of things."

Cabrese gave him a sharp look.

"All right. One time, I went back," Callahan said. "Just once. To say goodbye. To tell her to hang on, that things would get better for her."

"And. How did that go?"

"Oh. Really good. Amazing." He laughed. "Worse than you would believe."

Cabrese waited. Finally Callahan launched into it. "Wednesday evening. Visiting day. I'd waited five days for it. Wore my UN uniform. Practiced what I'd say. Practiced never seeing her again."

"Why the uniform?"

"Oh, don't you know this? A uniform, any uniform, makes it easier to cut through bureaucracy. I always wore it when I visited her at the VA, which has the kind of bureaucracy that can drive a sane man to murder. And of course I'd been wearing it when we met in Marchev - for those whole six weeks we were there together, waiting for her paperwork to come through. You know. Uniform. They issued me one when they assigned me to the peacekeeping force. Because, ah! very important to have a uniform for propaganda photos: _Heroic multinational UN peacekeeping force tours war-torn country. Feeds orphans, kisses babies, frees POW's. American ambassador leads the way."_

Callahan was beginning to go off the rails. Twitching and rambling. Cabrese said calmly, "Yes. I remember that part. Go on."

"Ah, yeah. Okay. So I find the place. St. Lukes. Her wing is locked; I had to buzz for entrance. Clerk peeks out, junior nurse, whatever. Sees me in my uniform. Looking ready to pose for more photographs! Buzzes me in. She's young, she's fluttery. She doesn't check with anyone - doctor, nurse, whoever she might have been supposed to check with. She takes me down the hall. Angel's door is half open. And, you know what, can we just fucking stop there? Please?"

"I'll wait," said Cabrese. After a moment, Callahan nodded. 

"We push open the door, and there she is. On the bed. Except, you know, she's-- She was thrashing, screaming, and there were a bunch of people around her. They were strapping her down. They had one wrist and one ankle done already, in sort of handcuffs. Leather handcuffs. And she was fighting and they were grabbing at her. Three against one, and she weighed, what, ninety pounds when I found her. "

"Four-point restraints."

"This is a thing?" Callahan turned on him. "This is a legitimate thing? I mean, for people who aren't on the gurney for their lethal injection?"

"For people who are a danger to themselves."

"I don't know about that." He shook his head. "I don't know anything, but I know what it looked like. And then-- and then she turned her head and saw me standing there. Staring at her while they--" He broke off. Added in a low voice, "Like she didn't get held down enough at Marchev."

There was a long wait. Finally Cabrese said, "Jamie. I want to understand."

"Okay. Understand this. She saw me. She knew me. And I knew she knew, because her eyes flew wide open and she froze. She stopped fighting, stopped cursing. Stopped dead. She just looked at me. She looked at me like--" His face wrenched itself into a different shape and he struck his square palms against his eyes. When he put them down a moment later, he looked composed but broken. "I'd won her over in Marchev; it was weeks before she talked to me. I thought I could help her. She trusted me. But the way she looked at me that day." He shook his head helplessly. "Like I'd taken the last thing she could believe in."

Cabrese said in his gentlest voice, "And then?"

"Oh. I ran, believe me. Hell outa Dodge."

"That was the right thing to do."

Callahan looked up. "You warned me. You warned me that I had to stop before she got hurt. You were right."

"I'm not glad about that. What happened then?"

"Aw, you know." There was a big intake of breath, a sigh. Callahan was through the worst of it. "Never saw her again. Never went back. Thought long and hard about what you'd said; breaking it off clean. The hospital called me before she was released. You remember I had listed myself as her contact person, since she had no family. They told me her plan was to move back to Boston where she was raised, look for work. Said that I had the right to contest it if I had qualms. I didn't want her to go so far from me. But I didn't contest it." His eyes roved. "She left. And me, I was very well-behaved, I didn't interfere, I never saw her again. But. There is a but."

"Mmm."

"Yeah. I asked someone I know in Boston to keep an eye out. To run her name. He told me when she signed the lease on her apartment. I asked him to check out the neighborhood; make sure it would be safe. You know. For a woman alone. He told me when she took that crap job. Ten bucks an hour; she barely had to file a return. I kept hoping it was just a stop along the road for her, and she'd move on and get herself something better. But she never did."

"How often did you check up on her?"

"Every six months. Early January, early July. Had a schedule."

"But you never went to Boston or contacted her again."

Callahan hesitated. It was a tiny trip-up, the disconnect of a mind and mouth going in two directions. If he hadn't been so undressed and beaten up already, he would have lied without any difficulty. But he didn't quite pull it off. Cabrese saw it. Callahan knew he'd been seen. They watched each other for a moment. 

Cabrese said quietly, "Very thin ice, Mr. Callahan."

Callahan's head went down and he groaned. Some minutes passed.

"Full disclosure," Callahan said at last.

"Please."

"I've, yes. I have been writing to her. Every six months. My friend confirmed her home address and I'd send a note. Nothing much. 'Thinking of you. Call if you need anything.' She never answered." He looked up, miserably. "She's changed, you know. I wouldn't have recognized her when I saw her again in DC. She's a real church secretary now. Looks like one. Walks and talks like one."

"That's how she knew your phone number." Callahan nodded. "And so," Cabrese said, "five nights ago she contacted you. She said she was in trouble. And then - this is the fun part - you arranged a job for her at Theta base, where you teach, and less than an hour from your home. You went to Al Quentin and talked him into sponsoring her. Quentin, who knows nothing about your history with her, because it's hidden under EDD confidentiality rules."

"She knows Jaro, and she knows the mountains, and she speaks Karthic. She's a valuable asset and she deserves the job. As for getting it past Quentin - yeah, that was pretty slick of me. All that company training in subterfuge finally paid off."

"You are in this thing very deep, Jamie."

"Hey!" Callahan raised his head. "Four years, and I never laid eyes on her. Never went near her. Every six months I sent a note. So give me a little credit for my iron self-control." 

"Listen to me. We need information from her. I'm going to count on you to help with that. But you can't get involved with her. You have to be careful."

"I know. All right?" Cabrese watched him set his face back down in his hands "I know this."

"I don't think you do. Four years she's been a church secretary. You want to know why? I know already. She's been waiting for you. Waiting in a tower for her prince to come."

"What? No, it's not that. She never even answered me."

"Same prince who saved her from Marchev. Not something a girl forgets."

"It's not that."

"It's exactly that. You know what else? I watched her security intake through the glass. Want to know what I think?"

"I know you'll tell me."

"I'm paid to spot liars and I'm very good at my job. You, Jamie, you're a professional liar and you can slip one past me from time to time. That girl? She's an amateur."

"She's not lying. She was with the Karth. I saw her talking to Kozlan and the rest of them. She knows them. She was in the mountains."

"That much is true. It's just every other word out of her mouth, that I find questionable."

"Like what?

"What she was doing with them in the mountains, all those months. Why a twenty-three year old girl - an ethnic Karth - would go for spring break in Arbeztan on the eve of a war. What really happened to the roommate." Callahan looked up sharply. "Yes. It's a pack of lies, all of it. Wake up."

"If you had seen her in Marchev, ribs sticking out, sores all over her body--" 

"Oh, she was tortured; I believe that. That doesn't mean she was innocent."

Callahan laughed. "This is fucking bullshit."

"I listened to the tape of your EDD this morning. I'm going to remind you of something you said back then. Maybe you'll remember this. _'I just wanted to save her. One last thing I could save from that hellhole, from Marchev. One fucking thing that I could still do.'_ You said that. Do you remember that? Does it sound like you?"

Pain showed in Callahan's eyes. He looked down at his hands. Finally he said softly, "Yeah. That sounds about right."

"You saved her at Marchev. Now you've done it again. But there's something else you're not seeing." He sighed. "Ask yourself. How likely is it that a guard from Marchev recognized her in Boston?"

"It's possible. There are plenty of Arbezi immigrants in her area."

"Maybe. Here's a more likely scenario: Unstable girl with untreated PTSD. Living in a crap apartment, going everyday to a crap job, checking her mailbox, waiting for a letter every six months, she's got your phone number memorized and she's waiting for you to save her. Year after year. Getting crazier by the minute. Starts imagining things. A drunk leans too close. Some immigrant speaks Arbezi to her on the street at night. Or maybe it's more than that. Maybe she hallucinates. Maybe she can't tell her nightmares from reality anymore. She gets confused. And maybe, just maybe, she gets sick of waiting for you and decides to bait a trap. Invent a little story. Play the damsel in distress once again."

"No. I saw her in Washington after that guy spooked her. Scared out of her mind."

"Shaking, was she? Jumpy?"

"That's right."

"She's still shaking. She'll be shaking worse tomorrow." Callahan gave him a puzzled look. "It's not fear. It's alcohol withdrawal. Think your clinical acumen is as good as mine? It's not. Your girl's a drinker - walking the same road that killed her father. His death certificate was in the files you gave me."

"I don't believe this." Callahan was on the ropes, shaking his head. "The stalker was real. She's in danger. She can't go back to Boston. And she wouldn't make that up; she's not like that."

"You don't know the first fucking thing about her. Did you tell me the truth about what was in those letters you sent her?"

"Yes."

"Hope so. Because I guarantee they're in her quarters, every one of them, in a keepsake box, tied with a red silk--"

"No. No way, she's not--"

"--which means, I'm about to see them for myself."

Callahan sat back hard. He looked stunned. "You're going to search her room."

Cabrese nodded. "Want to change your story now?"

It took Callahan a long time to answer. Finally he said, "I should have known, right? She's been here five minutes and already the company is doing its thing. Doing what it does best. I should have known what I was bringing her into." He straightened. "Just, please. Tell your men to do the job right. So she never has to know."

"All right."

"We're done?" Cabrese nodded, and Callahan got up and thrust his hands into his pockets. "Are you going to pass me?"

"Jamie."

"Right. Fuck you, too."

Cabrese watched him go. He wished, oddly, that he could have given the man some comfort. Callahan had done remarkably well, considering everything that was stacking up around him.


	10. Angel/Cabrese/furious.  Confrontation with guard.  Confrontation with Cabrese.

"You wait for the gunshot. All coiled up, and every second that goes by, you feel your strength draining out of you. And then it comes. Bang - and you go. Before it happens, you want it so badly. An instant after it comes, all you can think is, oh god make it stop." 

She loved how Cabrese listened. 

He said, "And what happens next?" 

"For the first few strokes, you're too excited to think. Then you calm down and rein yourself in, because you know how much pain is coming to you. An average race is maybe six minutes long, and after the first few seconds you pretty much want the sky to split open and lightning to strike you dead."

When she first heard a gunshot close below her in the mountains, she had momentarily flamed up in excitement. Her body, trained to jump at the starter's pistol, did what it had always done. She could smell the river, green and rich, and see night herons crouched silent along the weedy shore. Only when the rain was lashing hard, roiling the surface, was the smell different: fresher, like a secret had emerged from the mud. 

"And you actually liked that," Cabrese laughed. "That was your idea of a good time." 

"Oh, yeah. I liked it." 

"Why?"

She would never admit it, but she'd started looking forward to the two evenings a week she went to number 82. Cabrese never asked about Arbeztan. He was casual; he had a sense of humor, and he let her lead the conversation. She told him about her long-lost days. The frat party where she swung on a ceiling pipe and broken it, filling the basement with the smell of gas and causing three hundred students to empty out into the snowy street. The day she heard the coach telling the cox that she was the heart of the boat. She used to take stairs two at a time, leaping any wall or bench that stood in her way. She had loved the growing power that rippled just under her skin. She wanted to say all this to Dr. C, to prove that she had been normal, once; better than normal. She hadn't always been a victim in need of rescue. She had been mighty. 

She understood that his warmth was a strategy and that she should be wary. But he drew her in. He let her relive the past, when she'd been young and strong and like other people, and this gave her hope those times were not yet dead.

"Why I loved it. I guess because it was hard and I was good at it. And the coach always loved me best. Also I liked--" She cut her eyes away. "Not being in charge." She tried to explain. "It's like, when you row you escape yourself. You're an animal, sort of: a sled dog or a racehorse. You're just muscle and all you have to do is obey orders and sacrifice your body. Everything else is out of your hands. If the cox calls for more power, or a higher stroke rating, anything, you do what you're told. There's no thinking required." An old phrase came back to her. "It's a test. A matter of honor." She laughed a little, pretending she wasn't serious. 

"Ah. I understand." 

He looked at her so levelly that she became embarrassed - of her broad thighs spreading in the chair; her weakness; of how she must look to him. "Well, I'm not like that anymore. I'm no good for it." She was twenty-five pounds over race-weight; she walked with a limp; she was twisted and broken. And at Marchev-- She winced and blotted out the flash of shame that skewered her. 

"You didn't do any rowing in Boston after you got back? Why not?" 

She shrugged, feeling her cheeks heat up. He had to ask? It occurred to her to say that a boathouse membership was too expensive, which would have been true. But mostly it would have been a lie, and she didn't want to lie to him. 

"You're how old?" he asked.

"Twenty-nine."

"You ever play any other sports?"

She'd hauled equipment up in the Kar-Paval against the wind. She'd dragged a loaded travois up the slopes and unloaded the goods into a cave, then gone back down to do it again, eight times, from dawn until dusk in a race against sundown. Scrambling and crawling among the snow-capped boulders, she'd kept her head down and crept as close as she could to the advancing line of artillery fire coming up the mountain. "Just some running," she told him. "Went rock climbing a few times, but hated it. I did some biking in Europe, the summer before Prague. Came out of the mountains once in a thunderstorm, down into Strasbourg; couldn't see a thing with the sky black and the rain lashing me in the face as I rode. Hit a rough patch and got thrown. Nearly got killed. My ankle was all twisted up, my rental bike mangled. I had to hop back and forth gathering all my stuff that had scattered everywhere. Blood running down my legs, and terrified a car would whip around the curve and end me."

"I can picture it," he remarked. "Tough girl."

"Once upon a time."

He considered her for a moment. Then he said, "You think Marchev changed you and made you weak. It didn't, though. You've done that to yourself.."

For a moment she didn't understand the words. Then they entered her like hot poison. 

She had been in the Vosges, admiring her younger self; she had thought he was there too, that together they were applauding the brave rugged girl she'd been at twenty-two, the kind who took corners too fast on wet asphalt coming down from the mountains. Instead he was thinking of Marchev, of her at Marchev, of who she'd been there. She gaped. Her mind spun, like wet wheels on a crashed bike lying across the road. Rage took hold of her. It was like he'd reached across the room and slapped her and ripped her clothes off. He was throwing Marchev in her face. As if he knew anything about it-- as if he had the first fucking clue-- 

"I'm sorry," he said. But he didn't look sorry. "You needed to hear it."

"I have to go." The words were shaped small and tight, ejected through the spaces between her clenched teeth.

"You like the Greek heroes, right? What do you think about Odysseus?" 

She didn't want to answer, but the pressure of the silence built, like stones piled on her chest. "What about him?" 

"He didn't give up. Kept his eyes on the prize, and didn't let anything keep him from getting home." 

He knew her too well by now. She had given too much away and he was using this against her. She spat, "I'm not Odysseus," knowing as she said the words that they made the weakest and lamest of excuses. But it was all she could come up with.

"You want to be. Don't tell me you don't miss Ithaca." 

He had sunk the knife deep, through her soft belly into her vital organs. He twisted it. "You survived the war but you're failing the journey back. You stopped among the lotus eaters and you stayed there a long damn time. That Arbezi man who stalked you did you a favor when he finally woke you up. Now you're here. This is Calypso's island, maybe - but you won't get to stay seven years. You get six months before your term is up. Then you go back out there." He nodded toward the window. "It's a big ocean, hero. And if you haven't noticed, Poseidon's waiting and he's not your friend. He's going to keep coming after you. Six months - and once you run it down I won't be around to help you. Not me and not James Callahan." 

"Fuck yourself," she said.

"You'll leave this place and be on the other side of the gates. Then, if you aren't raped and murdered by Arbezi immigrants with a blood grudge, you'll still have fifty years ahead of you. What are you planning to do with it? Church secretary?"" 

Back in her apartment, she locked herself in. She paced in fury. That was how those people were: they got you with your guard down, and they tore into you where it hurt the most. Then it was too late. Once they invaded, you could never get their claws out of you. She walked in circles, cursing the bare rooms. Her quarters had no distractions - no TV or computer. The Odyssey and Les Miserables, that's what she had. She'd read them both a hundred times. But the Odyssey she'd never touch again, and Valjean - she loved him, but he wouldn't survive five minutes in the real world. Neither of them would fix what was wrong with her tonight. Jamie. Maybe if Jamie were around, he'd-- But she hadn't seen him since her first day. She was alone here. 

She could use a drink. Or twenty. Damn. She had been so angry leaving Cabrese's office that she hadn't even stopped at Mika's and bought her usual ramen and ice cream. She was hungry but too furious to think of doing something as prosaic as buying food, being in public and having to be polite to people. She couldn't think of anything else to do, so she lay in bed staring up, her thoughts deepening from red to bloody scarlet. Fuck Cabrese. He thought she was a tough girl? He had no clue. She'd stood in front of Jaro and told him exactly that. "I want to fight," she had said fiercely. He hadn't believed her at first. No one had. 

There was no Katin here, no Jaro, no fight. There was only her and the walls around her. She pounded her fist into her mattress, and beat her face violently into her pillow until she was weary but no less angry. Finally she slept fitfully, the blanket over her head. When she woke up it was dark. The clock read 11:18 pm. She didn't feel any better. Shoving open the bedroom window, she stuck her head out. The night was warm with a wet breeze was gusting. It was her favorite kind of weather from when she was a kid: the rising wind that presaged a thunderstorm. It called her out. It was past curfew, though. Well, fuck them and fuck their rules. She pulled on her shoes and went out, leaving her blue pass on the counter where she had tossed it earlier, letting the door bang behind her.

Out on the grounds, she crossed to the nearest quadrangle and walked along the diagonal footpath, keeping her head down. She felt fierce and bitter. She reached the far side of the quad and stomped past the Chelmsford building, and fifty-six, and other buildings she hadn't learned the names of. She didn't pause at the sight of a guard in khakis up ahead.

"Excuse me, ma'am," he said as she approached. "May I see your badge, please?"

"Don't have one." She pushed past him, not slowing down.

"Ma'am, I need to see a badge or I'll have to ask you to--" He put a hand on her upper arm and she shook him off - tried to, but his grip tightened and she spun towards him and tried to yank free, and she knew what she was going to do an instant before it happened. Her free hand balled into a fist and she threw a punch that almost, not quite, connected with his mouth. He turned and ducked and she caught his cheekbone, which was good enough for--

Pain spurted through her right shoulder as he brought her arm up behind her, bending her double. His legs tripped her up as she was thrust down onto the path and then he was on top of her, a knee at the small of her back, her wrists in handcuffs a moment later. 

/

They took her to a building, to a front desk where she gave her name while looking down at the floor, and then into a room with bare walls and a long window and a metal bench. When she sat down, they took the cuff from her left wrist and clipped it to the underside of the bench, pinning her right arm. Her shoulder was still throbbing. Guards passing down the hall looked in at her through the window, curiously. Someone arrived with a form and asked her questions and made notes. After he went out, she could hear him making a phone call. She yanked at the handcuff that held her - checking, without much optimism, if she could work herself free. The guard stuck his head back in when he heard the noise and said, "Stop that." He went out again. A long time passed. There was no clock. She put her left hand up over her eyes, which were burning. She didn't want anyone to see. 

Later she heard Cabrese's voice outside the room. "It's all right. I'll take responsibility for her."

"She attacked a guard on watch."

"She's a civilian. I'm working with her. Special circumstances."

"Regulations demand--"

"She'll be dealt with by her supervisors in the morning."

She heard more talk, indistinct. And finally Cabrese saying firmly, "Thank you."

Cabrese entered with the guard who had done the paperwork. The guard was brusque. "You're being released for now. In the morning charges will be submitted and the authorities will take it from there." He uncuffed her and she stood up sullenly, rubbing her wrist.

"With me," Cabrese said.

She was trying to figure out her next move but no answer was coming to her, so she trailed along a pace behind him. He led the way out of the security building and across the dark and silent grounds; she walked slowly, not wanting him to think she was chagrined or defeated. Without a word, he led her to a building on the far side of the quad. The passed through a vestibule, then through double doors, and on the other side she found herself standing in a large, high-ceilinged gym. A stiff canvas curtain hung from rings on the ceiling, partitioning the space into two rooms: one side a basketball court, the other filled with free weights and workout equipment. Around the sides were ropes hanging from the ceiling, a cargo net, a climbing wall going up twenty feet. The whole place was empty except for a man doing bench presses in a tank and shorts, grunting as he heaved. The room smelled of varnish and ammonia, like the gym she'd used in college. In her skirt and pumps she felt out of place; but then again she would have felt out of place here wearing anything. The bench press man sat up and rubbed his face with his shirt.

She followed Cabrese to the corner. He pointed to a punching bag, the heavy kind that hung low. "You want to fight? All right. Here's the place."

She scowled. "I don't want to hit a bag."

"What then?" He raised his eyebrows. "Want to hit me?"

"You'll do." She didn't exactly mean it; it just sounded good leaving her mouth.

"All right then." He motioned. "Lose the shoes."

It was one of those situations where defying an order showed more cowardice than obeying. She slipped her feet out of her pumps. Slowly, with her jaw set foward. 

"You can hit me. Go ahead. Let's see what you got." When she hesitated he said, "I won't hit back." He said it to humiliate her, to goad her. Now she had no choice.

She had seen plenty of fights. The men in Kozlan's group fought for sport, the traditional way, _gashents_ it was called, around the fires in the evening. A string was used to tie the left wrists of both men, leaving about two feet of slack between - if the string broke because you were knocked down or fell or leapt back to avoid a blow, you were the loser. Occasionally there were real fights over an insult to someone's pride - though when Kozlan saw that he would stop it. She herself never fought. Nor had she ever fought before going to the mountains, except in middle school and twice against her father when she didn't have a choice. And at Marchev-- At Marchev, after the few feeble attempts to defend her helpless flesh and her dignity, she had just given up and-- 

Cabrese had his hands up too, in loose fists as if he expected little from her. "Come on. You want to."

She stepped in and hit him in the chest. He made no move to protect himself and did not seem to feel her punch. In frustration she swung again and again. After three or four blows she was pleased to see him wince and start turning sideways to deflect her. She went for his abdomen, and finally his face, which he blocked. Her arms were becoming tired.

"Move your feet more," he said. "If you stand like you're stuck in cement, I'll knock you down with my first punch. Keep your body turned to make less of a target."

She didn't want a goddamn boxing lesson. She stood where she was and took another shot at his face.

"Fine. Learn the hard way." His fist flew out and caught her in the chest, making her gasp and stumble back. Shocked, she dropped her hands. Pain ricocheted through her ribs. "Put your hands up. Defend yourself."

She shook her head; no way. She had no time to react when his hand flew again, landing in the same spot as before. "Hey! Stop it."

"You started it." She was stunned to hear the schoolyard phrase. Could he be serious? Then his fist moved and she tried to dodge sideways and block it. It glanced off her forearm; sending waves of pain into her hand. Angry, she went after him; he blocked. She expected he would smirk. Instead, his face was intent. "Good," he said.

He swung and this time she stepped back and turned, but still took most of the force with her shoulder. She was sweating and panting already, and her shirt was askew. "Your turn," he said. "First I hit, then you hit."

Grimly, she nodded and launched another punch. Her arms ached. "Not good enough. Try harder." If she weren't exhausted she would have told him to go to hell, but it was his turn now and she needed all her strength. He hit her in the sternum again, making her cry out. She dropped her hands.

"I'm done."

He hit her again. "Then you lose your turn."

"Fuck you." She swung for his face; he deflected.

"Good." Then he caught her in the chest. He was not striking hard. She recognized that he could level her with one punch if he wanted to. "You miss being strong. You could get it back."

Instead of answering, she summoned her will and hit with everything she had, which wasn't much.

"I'll make you a challenge," he said. "If you beat me, you keep doing things your way. If I beat you, you're mine and I call the shots."

She shook her head. "No."

"It will be fair. It's a contest you can win. You get twenty tries to hit me. All you have to do is graze me with your knuckles, just once. Ready? Go."

She could not refuse; that would be cowardly; a violation of Rule Three. She leapt forward and threw a punch, but he jumped back and she hit only air. She went after him, swinging wildly. He dodged. Round and round she chased him. "That's five," he said. She was panting heavily. Finally she thought she had him cornered against a wall, but he ducked and spun away. "Twelve." 

"I give up," she said sulkily, dropping her arms. Her shirt was sticking across her breasts. "I can't."

"You're quitting? Really? You won't even try?"

She shook her head. "Forget it. I'm done."

He came towards her. "You know, if you don't even have--" And that's when she lunged with a cocked fist and went low towards his abdomen, almost getting him, except that he jumped back and twisted his torso sideways like a contortionist. "Oho, tricky, are we?" He grinned. "Nice try, but no. Thirteen."

She ran out the rest of her chances on wild roundhouses, frustrated and already knowing she was beat. When he said "twenty," she turned away angrily. He grabbed her shoulder and spun her to face him. "Focus," he said, "because I'm done pulling my punches."

She barely had time to register that, when a jab went into her ribs and knocked her down, leaving her gasping. His eyes were hard. "Get up. Up on your feet." She struggled up, furious, and was barely upright when the next blow landed in the same place and she fell again. She looked up with a snarl. 

But his face had changed. He was not taunting. "Get up." It was a command - but there was no mockery in his features. "Angel," he said. "Get up." 

She lumbered up. Something was shifting between them. He knocked her down again. She hurt all over. He was staring down at her. He nodded. "Again. Up." 

At Marchev, she had been knocked down. She had been given orders, forced to crawl, to fetch drinks, to lie down on her back. But Cabrese was not speaking like a Marchev guard. He spoke like Jaro giving orders when there was work to do. "Get up now," he urged again.

She looked at him, uncertain. She was confused, and she hurt.

"You can do this. It's what you are. Get up." 

She understood. 

He wasn't demanding her submission; he was calling on her valor. And she had always believed in valor.

She collected herself. She was weak and trembling. She drew herself up on one knee and then got her feet under her. She rose and tried to keep herself steady despite her shaking legs. "Good," he nodded. "This is the last one. Show me what you're made of." 

She had no hope of blocking it, but she put her fists up and angled herself sideways.

"Ready?"

She nodded.

The strike landed high in the abdomen and she folded like cardboard, landing on her side and wondering if he'd broken her ribs. The pain was less shocking than the terror she felt a moment later when she could not work her lungs or cry out. Cabrese knelt quickly beside her. "Easy," he said. "Your diaphragm is stunned. Give it a minute." She knew this feeling from past beatings. "Good" he said. She was becoming able to pant shallowly. Her lungs gradually unlocked and she lay where she was, curled on her side, blinking hard. He rested a hand on her shoulder. 

"You got broken over there." His hand was warm. "And I'm going to fix you." When she looked at him he added, "You lost the bet, remember?"

She would not have resisted but her pride was at stake; she couldn't lie here and accept defeat so easily. "You want me to talk about what happened there. Fuck that. It's not gonna help."

He shook his head. "No way. You won't have to say a word."

\------------------------ 

She tried to conjure good moments: from the past, to counter the sting of his words. The way the Karth men had looked at her when she came back that third time they sent her out with an explosive to bury in the road. The first couple times, she had been a joke - something like a mule they were putting to use, not caring if she got killed, maybe expecting her to run off in fright. But that third time when she had gotten it done and scrambled back up the cliffs over cold rock that gashed her hands and thighs, and came up on Noriz and Katin who had been watching from above, it had been different. They had exchanged a look, and Katin had said, "Kromchyen" - a word she had heard only from her father, when she was young and did something that pleased him. 

It was not enough, though.


	11. miranda; training begins.  Angel/Cabrese seal the deal.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> broken bird 2.

Angel came awake in a burst of fear, like a grape bursting out of its skin. Her lamp was on and a woman was in her bedroom. She clutched at her blankets. She couldn't make a sound; her throat had closed itself. 

"Sorry to scare you. I knocked and rang the bell, but you didn't wake up. Master key." The woman was about Angel's age. She was wearing shorts and a t shirt and carried a bundle of clothes under her arm. "I'm Miranda LaSalle. We've met before - at the language lab. I think Dr. Cabrese told you to expect me." Her hair was cut in a boyish style, the bangs falling into her eyes.

Angel was still too frightened to answer. Her thoughts scrambled one after another as she tried to remember where she was and what she was doing here. She recognized this woman as the one who had once escorted her to Dr. Cabrese's office. She had looked different then. She'd been dressed in something stiff and professional and Angel had gotten a vague impression that she was unfriendly. 

"I brought you some clothes and shoes. I guessed at your size. Change into them; we're going out." She nodded toward the bathroom. "I'll wait."

Angel climbed out of bed and took the clothes. Her arms hurt and her chest was sore. She felt beaten black and blue, and for a moment she couldn't remember why. Then it came back to her. In the bathroom she pulled on a pair of black running pants and a blue t shirt. There were socks as well. The sneakers fit decently. Angel did not let herself wonder what the purpose of the clothes was, or how Miranda Lasalle could have known her shoe size. Her fear was turning to excitement. She had lost a bet to Dr. Cabrese and this woman was here to collect. 

Outside the quad was ghostly under the combined light of lamps and rising sun. Miranda's pace was quick; Angel hustled to keep up. Far down the quad was the figure of a guard; Miranda raised her hand to him briefly and then turned up one of the paths that led out of the bowl of the campus, up the hillside into the surrounding woods. Soon they were stepping between trees, and the concrete path turned to gravel that crunched loudly at their feet. A little farther on the gravel turned to packed dirt. Miranda stopped. "Here," she said. The path divided, turning both left and right. "This is the main loop trail," Miranda said. "It's over three miles. It goes all the way around the base. Stay next to me and keep up." 

Miranda took the path to the left, traveling at a brisk trot. Angel stumbled along behind. She was quickly winded, and in the poor light she kept stumbling. When she had lived in the Kar-Paval she would have run a path like this sure-footed even in the dead of night, stepping high to clear the rough ground. Now her fatigue made her drag so that her toes caught on every root and rock. Her bad hip hurt. After a certain point, however, the pain reached a plateau of not-quite-misery and her breathing settled into a steady pant. Miranda stayed a foot or two ahead of her. 

"What's the plan?" she gasped. 

"You keep up. Also, don't talk. Dr. Cabrese said that specifically." Angel was falling behind and jogged few steps. 

The path grew more visible as the sky lightened. Angel had no idea how long they had been on the path and kept hoping Miranda would announce that they were done. Instead she remained always a few steps ahead, occasionally looking back to say, "Pick up the pace." The world pulsed wet and green, wavering around the edges, and the trees were graceful. Angel felt hidden and secretive - the old feeling from mornings on the river when Boston slept. She could not see Theta through the forest and wondered if it was coming to life or if everyone still slept. She was eager to be done because she hurt and all her muscles were protesting this treatment; but she told herself it was a test of strength and had to be endured. In rowing practice, she had survived each morning by narrowing her view to only that which lay before her, blocking out the frame of time and never thinking _How much longer?_ It had been the same when she climbed up from Vuro and on a hundred nights when she had squatted in the cold with a rifle, standing watch. She was good at enduring. She was a body with one job to do, one more step to take - and when that was done, one more. 

Miranda veered to the right. Two wooden posts were set in the ground with a clearing beyond. "This way," she said. "Obstacle course." 

A handful of rough structures stood in the clearing. Among them was an A-shaped frame standing fifteen feet high, with wooden cross-pieces for climbing. Farther on she saw something like a balance beam, and beyond that another wooden frame with a cargo net slung over it, near-vertical on one side and sloping gently down the other. Miranda pointed to the far side. "There are more paths that way, deeper in the woods. All this land belongs to the base for another half-mile or so. Then it's all state forest on the other side of the fence." 

She walked to the A-frame and started climbing, her motions efficient and practiced. It looked easy. Angel climbed up after her but the first step was a challenge; the ladder was nearly vertical and to keep herself balanced, she had to cling to the crosspieces with all her strength. By the third rung, she could go no farther. She looked up at Miranda, who had climbed over the top and was descending the other side. "I can't go any higher," she muttered, not loud enough for the other woman to hear. 

Miranda swung down, rung by rung, and leaped lightly to the ground. "Stuck? Do one more," she said. 

"I'll fall." 

"Try." 

Angel knew it was beyond her strength. Her arms were quivering. However, she let go with her right arm and tried obediently to propel herself upward. She lost her balance and grabbed the cross-piece again and clung, feeling sick. 

"All right," said Miranda. "This week, three rungs. Next week, four." 

They moved on to the balance beam, which was a round log a foot off the ground. Once again Miranda made it look easy, dashing across like a cat. Angel thought again of the mountains, where she had clambered on ledges and pulled herself over boulders. She had taken her strength for granted back then. She climbed up on the log and slipped off immediately. She fought back tears. How had her body decayed so badly? She turned away so Miranda wouldn't see the water in her eyes. She made three more tries at the balance beam, getting no more than halfway across each time. 

"It's like everything else," Miranda said philosophically. "Easier with practice. I'm a West Point grad, so I've been practicing a long time." She led the way out of the clearing and back to the main path, where she struck out again without a backward glance. Angel almost sobbed. Her legs were rubbery and buckled unexpectedly as she came over the crest of the next small hill, so that she struck the dirt and hands and knees. Miranda did not look back. Angel climbed to her feet and struggled onward. 

Eventually she rounded a turn and found Miranda waiting against a tree. "Finished," she said. "Here's the path we started on, that leads back toward your quarters." At her feet was the gravel path. The area looked different in the full light of morning; the magic had fled the woods. A glimpse of grass was visible beyond between the gray trunks of the trees. "Dr. Cabrese wants to see you before work. We'll have to hurry." 

Miranda remained in the hall as Angel entered the office. Cabrese, behind his desk, set down the notebook he'd been holding and looked her over. 

"This is day one," he said. "It's not over yet. Miranda will come back for you after work. Every morning and evening, you'll work with her. I've also arranged for breakfast and dinner to be delivered to your quarters. You can still eat lunch with Ms. Lund, but don't buy junk from Mika's. " 

She could only nod. It was restful, to belong to someone else. 

"How is your hip?" 

"It's all right." 

"Sir," he said. She was confused. "You address me as 'sir,' he explained. "Same for everyone on the base: it's 'sir' or it's 'ma'am.' " 

She nodded. "My hip's all right, sir." 

"Any injuries today?" 

"No, sir." 

"Go to your quarters. Shower. Eat. Report to work as always. Remember that Ms. Lasalle is my eyes and ears; treat her like you treat me. I'll see you twice a week, no change from before. Do you have any questions?" 

She didn't. She felt hot inside, like a vessel full of molten iron, in danger of cracking apart. 

He added, "It won't be easy. That's one thing I can promise you." He was looking at her like he had already guessed her secrets. 

"I never said I wanted easy," she told him, tilting up her chin. 


	12. angel to callahan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> loyalty honor and all the good stuff. Callahan gets a glimpse of what he isn't. Possibly this won't end well.

She remembers a night in the mountains when the others were congratulating her: she had just shot a man in the face. She was horrified but everyone told her it was wonderful. She summoned up pictures of Achilles and Carana. Heroes kill, she told herself. They vanquish enemies. That's what makes them heroes. So she told herself it didn't matter, Jaro's hand coming down on her shoulder, telling her it was her shot that saved them and won the skirmish. Her conscience set her apart and she didn't want to be apart - she wanted to lose herself in the battle and camaraderie and the greatness of their cause. So she pushed aside her objections and became as vicious as she could be. For Carana. And at the next raid, she kills more than one. 

Only now, she could not imagine that the wild killer in the mountains had been herself. And still, she knew her duty. 

.

She had had many nights in the mountains to contemplate her fate. She had embraced it, then. Coming to America had clouded her vision, but she had been sure when when she fought for Jaro and for the Kar-Paval and had dug graves for her comrades. One day it would be the others gathering to scrape a grave for her.

Steels herself. "I'm here, but I'm supposed to be there. Keeping my promises. Fighting, like Jaro is. Like I promised I would."

Or THIS IS WHERE she expresses her tangled sense of duty and honor. They saved her - so she had to fight their fight. And ...carana was dead secretely... and she'd seen in the town that Arbezi were killing non-arbezi. So her notions of honor meant she had to fight like achilles for her people and her friends. Not to mention, her father. She says, "It was hard but only for a few days. After that, it was surprisingly easy. They stopped being human; they were vermin and killing them felt good. The first time I watched from above while one of the devices exploded just right aftre I'd buried it, I felt nothing but joy. Now... I'm back here and the rules are all different. I killed people. I'm a killer. Strange." "I would have died if they hadn't taken me in. They taught me to fight. I swore them my loyalty. It's my parents' homeland, and mine too. know what it's like to fight for something magnificent. Afraid of death? No. It was worth dying for.. The night the lowlanders bombarded Razulle, we could hear the screams between explosions. Maybe four thousand people died the first night. Jaro took a band of men with RPGs to cripple the artillery. I helped lead the survivors up into the hills to some of the higher villages. I knew where the land mines were."

She's suddenly uncertain. Deep down, she prefers it here, in safety and warmth. But hates herself for breaking her word.

Her clothes were loose on her. In fact, Miranda had recently shown up one morning with new running clothes in a smaller size. She had bought safety pins to hold the waist of her skirts in. She was sleeping well and waking up full of energy, bouncing to her feet before Miranda knocked at her door, smiling as she dressed. Dr. Cabrese had said he would fix her where she was broken, and she could feel his promise coming true.

It made her sick and sad, to think about the mountains. They had been coming into her mind more and more lately, as she spoke Karthic at hte language center and climbed the boulders and felt her body growing stronger. "I hated fighting. Got used to it, and there were days I loved it. But I was always sure that my fate was to die. When I was captured, I thought I would get a bullet and it would all be over." She fell silent. She had longed for the bullet that didn't come. But now she was alive and safe - so was it a good thing her fate had not found her? "It's still a surprise to me, that I'm alive."

"I wasn't scared because it didn't seem real, or maybe because I didn't mind dying. The first time I killed a man, it bothered me - not right away, of course, but after the shooting was over and we had scrambled back up between the cliffs to our base position. I had been told to hide above the path and fire at any of them who got past the group of us who were out front. One man got through. He was already hit and holding his arm so he couldn't run fast, and he had no idea I was there. He fell face-down, screaming and twitching. 

That night I thought about who he was and who might love him, and I wondered, did he have children or a mother at home, and did he sing, and had he played sports as a kid? But three of our own people had died that day. I didn't have to wonder about them - I knew their children and their mothers; I heard them crying. So I stopped caring about the people I was shooting at. I'd already seen what they were capable of. They were monsters. And if some of them weren't, I didn't want to think about that. I had to do the right thing, and the right thing was to defend my own people, who were under assault and being wiped out. 

"The thing is, pretty soon, I got to liking it. You squeeze the trigger and one of them falls. It feels good. If I planted a bomb in the road and heard men scream, saw their truck turn over because I'd buried it just right: that was like Christmas; it was like coming in first at the Head of the Charles. Most of my life there, I didn't like: not the cold or going hungry, or the mess that war makes: corpses festering; flies and maggots, a woman screaming in a field because her arm's been ripped off by a shell and there's nothing you can do. That's the stuff you don't see in the movies. But the killing. Yeah, I liked that. That was the best part, I guess." She laughed brightly. "You're thinking I'm a monster. Maybe you're right. Back then, it was normal to kill and to love killing. Now I stand here, safe in America, and it's not normal now that I'm here. It seems like that must have been someone else's life - but I know it was mine, because I still dream about it. And I've never stopped thinking about all the ways I'd kill them, how slow I'd do it and how they'd scream. I walk around this green quiet place and I wonder: Am I a monster? If I was that girl, how can I now be this girl? 

"So mostly, I pretend that that wasn't me. It was someone else. She had my face and now I've got her memories. But it wasn't me." 

Callahan cleared his throat. "You did what you had to do. You survived it." 

He had never fought in a war. She had the advantage over him in that - if 'advantage' was the right word. He had been involved along the edges; he'd laid the groundwork that came before or the machinations that went after. During the war she was describing, he'd been off to one side where the war didn't reach: living in Sokhrina, working out of the Embassy, being driven to government buildings and sporting arenas and nightclubs by a chauffeur who wore white gloves. Never, in his long career, had he seen war through the eyes of a foot soldier or a veteran. Angel was walking him through mountain peaks, through caves where she had huddled alongside men waiting to mount a dawn attack. She told him about arms shipments she had helped to drag up the mountainside under tree cover after a truck broke down. He had started wearing a recording device to capture the details of what she was relaying. Arms shipments, she said, had been arranged through a local crime family in the northern city of Mozrik, who were ethnic Arbezis but had no problem selling to all sides. Boys had joined up with Jaro's militia near the age of fifteen. Every boy had wanted to join and fight, though some had been kept at home by mothers and fathers, especially if the father was off fighting or had already been killed. Men shifted fluidly between civilian and military lives: taking part in battles, then melting back to their home villages to protect their families and keep their herds together. She detailed the networks of caves that the separatists depended on. The cracks in the mountain ran deep enough that they stayed a comfortable temperature year-round, so that even in winter storms the Karth fighters could withdraw into safety and leave their adversaries outside to be frozen or driven off by the elements. 

She was becoming beautiful to him. She had a springing step when she walked, and a carelessly rugged exterior that only made him more aware of the wounds she'd suffered. His old ideas had reawakened: when her stint at Theta was up, he'd help her find an apartment where he could look after her. He'd find her work in some branch of government. Maybe he'd bring her home and introduce her to Theresa - but somehow his imagination could never quite get that far. Theresa would befriend her. But after Angel left, Theresa would turn her discerning gaze on him and there would be too many questions. 

It would be good, though, to have no secrets. To tell Theresa, _I met her at Marchev. Now do you understand?_

Angel smiled bitterly. He led her on, and soon she was telling him a story about a trip halfway down the east face of her mountain with Kozlan's third-in-command to unload a truck full of supplies. Russian-made, she explained, because Jaro Kozlan knew someone who bribed someone who worked for someone who wanted to make trouble for the Arbezi. He got her talking about the weapons themselves: the size of the shipment, the way they were distributed among the bands of mountain fighters. She was giving him gold tonight. He kept encouraging her, and the more she talked the more he was beginning to picture her up in her mountains, surrounded by comrades, defending a high pass as a line of Arbezi militiamen advanced. He could see the fanatic peering out behind her eyes. 

"Name it," he said instantly. 

"I have quetstions about you, too, you know. What was your job when we met? What were you doing with the UN when they came into Marchev? I've never understood." 

"Well, I worked for the State Department. Throughout the war, I lived in the capital helping to shape US police towards the government. Lots of meetings, lots of reports on how the war was going. You understand that, in a civil war in a foreign country, the US won't usually take sides. We didn't know, you understand, was happening to the Manzar and the Karth. But towards the end, there were rumors and that's why the UN got involved. I was asked to travel with them, see the situation on the ground, talk to witnesses. There was some talk of bringing charges for war crimes. But that proved impossible." 

"Of course it did," Angel whispered. "Why?" 

"The UN submitted evidence. It didn't happen, because the killers - the guards at Marchev and the other camps - couldn't be identified or tied to government policy. They weren't regular soldiers."

"So they're still out there. Free men, going home to families at night. Gloating over what they did. No punishment."

Callahan said, "I'm afraid so. I think the best way to get justice is what you're doing here: speaking for the Karth. Teaching their language. The US government would like stability in Arbeztan and we'd like to see the Karth get what they deserve, a decent life, respect, self-governance. I'm not high on the food chain, but I have the ear of US policy-makers. If we knew something about the Karth and what they want, maybe that would be a first step."

"The camps - Marchev and the others - weren't run by the regular Arbezi army. A lot of the fighting was done by paramilitary groups acting independently." 'Independently' was a broad and useful word. Azor Mirtallev had funded those militias and directed Rachatan family men to train and organize roving bands of killers. "There were rumors of massacres at Marchev, so we entered by surprise, hoping to arrest the guards and not give them time to kill the prisoners or destroy evidence. They were racing out the back gate of the compound as we were coming in the front. We didn't catch anyone. They melted back into their neighborhoods, and there were few people left who could identify them and were willing to testify." He did not mention his private suspicion: that it was Quentin or someone like him who made sure the Marchev guards were warned in time, and that when they found no one to apprehend, his main feeling had been relief. A public trial might have uncovered the Azor connection. He was close to Azor. A grilling on what he knew and when he knew it would not have been pleasant to lie through. 

Angel put her hands over her face. An instant later she dropped them and shook her hair back from her forehead. "We shouldn't talk about it," she said. "Doesn't do any damn good. Quick; new subject. Nice weather for this time of year, isn't it?" 

She was bright and brittle and the damage was still visible just under her skin. He wanted to lay her down in the leaves. He'd like to undress her, hold her, keep her safe forever. "I'm so sorry," he said. He'd never said it before. "I'm sorry for what happened to you. I wish you'd never gotten mixed up in all that." 

"Not your fault." Which was an ironic comment, if he remembered the definition he'd learned in high school. Still, she sounded so certain that he was willing to believe her. 

"Okay, but I'm still sorry." 

She added wryly, "What kind of idiot goes to Arbeztan on spring break, right? I knew, too. I'd been warned there was trouble brewing in Vuro." She laughed, except it was more like a sob. "New subject. Please. Think of one." 

He could fuck her here; no one would catch them. He allowed himself the momentary fantasy of how she'd feel, how she'd give way under him and cling around his neck. Then he said, "Come on, let me get you to Cabrese." 

............................................................. 

He calls Simontov. "Hello, old friend." They chat pleasantly. Then Simontov asks him bluntly when the assault will happen. He says he needs a promise. He's being challenged within the Council of Eight. The Rachatan leaders are demanding he move against the Karth. Callahan says, "I understand. Let me talk to friends in the government nad convey your concerns." 

A few hours later he presented Simontov's concerns at a round-table meeting of eleven people. He recognized a few of the faces. Along with Quentin, he saw several of hte military representatives he had briefed in the past weeks. Also present was Erika Taylor, the US ambassador to Arbeztan, and an assistant to the Secretary of State. 

"He's on insecure footing at this point. He could launch an attack on the Karth without our support, but history shows the Arbezi regular forces will sustain casualties in the mountains and the separatists will step up their terrrorism. That won't help his standing, especially now that his popularity has fallen. His other option is to beg help from Russia or to let himself be pushed aside. His likely replacement is another member of the Council of Eight: Luk Amtoruc. I have no personal connection with him, but judging by his past positions and his allies in Sokhrina, he isn't likely to be friendly to our side." 

Erika Taylor spoke next. She had met Luk Amtoruc. She agreed with Mr. Callahan's assessment. She also provided figures regarding the mineral wealth buried in the mountains. She focused on ......... Her economic aide had calculated the current costs of importing it from central Africa - "not the most stable of exporters," she pointed out - and the projected profits from American-owned mines in the Kar-Paval. Additionally, she pointed out, human rights groups were getting on the bandwagon to oppose "blood minerals" from Africa. The Kar-Paval could provide a way out of that morass. The risks must be weighed against the benefits. 

They exchanged smiles as she sat down. She was clearly in favor of intervention. She hadn't mentioned her personal reason for wanting to see US military storm the mountains. This was her first ambassadorship - she had been chief of station in Zimbabwe before this - and she was eager to push her country into the limelight and attach her name to an exciting foray and an up-and-coming US business interest. Callahan recognized her motives as similar to his own. That made him look around the room and wonder how many others were under the influence of personal ambition.

A military man stood up. He spoke of the general challenges of mountain warfare on challenging terrain, and the desire of American people to avoid losses of their sons and daughters. However, he pointed out that technology had advanced in the past few years and that intelligence sources - here he motioned toward Callahan - had provided information on weapons supply lines, geography, and command structure among the separatists. To flush out and defeat the enemy would cost American lives but could be done, with a combination of special teams in the high mountains, support form the regular Arbezi military, and American air support and advanced technology. "The high peaks are inhabited chiefly by terrorists rahter than civilians," he said. "If we target our firepower there, we will eliminate the Karth leadership without causing undue stress on the civilian population." Callahan frowned at this. An assault by the Arbezi army, up the flanks of the mountain, would probably involve the usual amount of rape and murder and would drive villagers higher into the peaks. But he said nothing. 

The meeting broke up with no decisions publicly announced, but it was clear which way the wind was blowing. It occurred to Callahan that it was a good thing Angel was safe at Theta and no longer living among the enemy.

Here at Theta, though, it was different. Her world was Dr. Cabrese, Catherine, Miranda. None of them seemed to mind her freak status.

The first few nights, she hadn't understood the jokes the men were trading over her head. Their bawdy laughter was clear enough, though. When she'd pushed Katin's hand off her thigh, he had said something, two syllables only, that brought a roar from the men, and she had frozen because she knew what they planned for her. Fear and anger made her brave. She tried to hit him. He grabbed her arm and forced her down. Then Jaro appeared. His barked command was all that saved her. 

He ordered her roughly into his parent's cottage. His wife was cooking, and he snapped at her to fetch some of his clothes. His mother went to the stove without a word and took over the stirring of whatever was in the pot, while Irel went behind a stone partition and emerged, head down, with her arms full. "Dress her; cut the clothes to her size," he had said. "Then feed her with the rest of us." She hadn't understood until later what was being said: she would eat with the men instead of waiting for the leftovers like the women and girls did, like she had done for her first few days and nights in the village. She had, in fact, been embarrassed to be served and had protested, "Let me help," as Irel and the other women served the men from the heavy pots. She had half-risen, but Jaro had pushed her back down. "Let the women do their work," he growled. 'Men are not servants." 

She was weighted by memory, and he could still feel her nerves humming when he stood close. She had seen darkness; she would never be an all-American innocent again. What she was becoming - what she had once been he supposed - was a strong woman pulling herself up from hell: marked by sadness, once broken, but now standing straight. He hadn't realized how right the transformation would look on her, or how it would tear at him to see her become before his eyes what she was meant to be.

The revelation that she had fought with the Karth had hit him hard; he had been distracted ever since she admitted it. She had not been a sorority girl, maybe, but a college firebrand - one of those young idealists, swept up in a fight she didn't understand. She had believed she was fighting for peace and freedom, probably, and the Karth had used this and sent her out like a pawn to be sacrificed, the same way they had sent the boy at the Block to his fate. It was despicable of them. He found himself hating Jaro Koslan. It was his fault she had lost her innocence. He had seen her idealism and manipulated her. 

This was one of the basics taught in training: young people had rigid ideas that made them easy to manipulate. Along with ego, money, resentment, and adventurism, it was one of the driving forces that rendered people open to recruitment. But Angel shouldn't have been used.

Her face darkened, and she hesitated before answering. "I said I wanted to fight. There was talk, but I couldn't understand what they were saying. The first night, I slept alongside the children of one of the fighters. A group of the men came to me in the dark and woke me - Katin who was Jaro's lieutenant, and some of the others. They put something in my hand - a contraption with wires. I didn't know the word they used - makhrat - but I could see it was an explosive. I thought it meant they had accepted me." She looked away. "They took me over a pass, to an overlook. Told me to bury the thing in the road below - how deep to bury it, and which side went face-up. They shoved me forward, said they'd wait up on the ridge for me. So I did it. And when I was done and climbed back up the ridge, they were gone. I thought they had been scared off by Arbezi, so I found my way back to the encampment. When they saw me, they cheered and called me makhrat-chi. Means, "bomb girl." I still didn't understand it was mockery. But it was the same the next night and the next, because that was the night-time activity: laying explosives in the roads to disable Arbezi vehicles." She shrugged. "I was a joke, and expendable - a foreign female showing up out of nowhere and thinking she belonged with them. And since I was American, they thought that I, you know, was a kind of camp follower. That's the stereotype about American women." 

Her light mood of earlier had fled. She was speaking to the ground. 

"Weren't you scared?" 

"I would have been, if I had any plans to live. But I knew by then that I would never leave Arbeztan. My destiny was to die in the mountains; it was just a question of when." She looked around. "It still baffles me sometimes, that I'm alive, and here. I don't know what to think of it. I was so sure back then. I knew my fate. Now, I've dodged my destiny, so I'm lost." 

"There's no destiny. There's blind luck, sometimes. You lived; you're home; you're safe." 

"In the stories, destiny can never be outrun. Death always reaches Samarra one step ahead of you."

He had no idea what she was talking about. He calculated that it would be better not to ask. 

"So how did you finally become a -- what is it called?"

"Vyeshcha." She stopped walking and faced him. "On the fourth night, there was trouble. Katin put his hands on me. I tried to fight. Jaro overheard and stepped in. Ordered me into his wife's tent and had her give me some of his old clothes and cut them to my size. He told me that if I was bent on staying, it would be as a vyeshcha so I wouldn't make trouble." 

"That's no good." 


	13. journal of angel morjo, second entry

Memory of Carana: 

Must have been a Sunday because we were both home, and must have been winter because the cold was coming in through a crack along the windowsill. Carana had picked the bed under the window when we first moved in, and I'd given it to her because she made me generous, but now she regretted her choice and I laughed at her. She was wearing a coat over her pajamas, sitting on her cold bed and touching up her perfect nails with Copper Glory. She'd flung last night's party clothes onto the floor. The smell of nail polish filled their bedroom. It was a girl smell - a freshman dorm at BC smell that took me back - sharp and clean and beautiful. But then she turned on the CD player and the first notes assaulted my ears. 

\-- "Oh, no. Off, off, please God, no more. I'm gonna scream." 

"Hey! Lizard king!" she said. "Show some respect." 

\-- "You're torturing me. Make it stop. I can't take it again." 

"He's a poet. He was the voice of his generation; he was--" 

\-- "Okay, so, first problem? Sidewalks don't crouch like dogs. Second problem? Remedial math for the mentally challenged. Five to one is _not_ the same as one in five. No." 

"Oh my god, I would so throw a pillow at you, but my nails are wet." 

"Also," I said louder, "if one in six dies, that means five in six get out alive. That 80-something percent. So, what the hell is he even talking about?" 

"You're such a geek. I can't believe you." 

\-- "No, let's do the math here - so, one third, 33.3 bar, cut in half; that's-- okay, that's over 83 percent. So, here's the damn correct lyrics, if he weren't a complete--" 

And Carana leapt up and turned the volume to high, to ten, to eleven; then she shouted over it. "--la la la, not listening, can't hear you, shut up shut shut up!" She was laughing, pinning her hands over her ears with the fingertips carefully arched back to keep the fresh polish out of her hair. 

I jumped up and struck a pose, pelvis out, air guitar. "Five to one, baby," I shouted; "one in _six_ \--" 

Then Carana joined in, screaming over me so I of course screamed louder and then we were both going at it at the tops of our voices. Carana yelled "No one here gets--!" while I tried to silence her with "Eighty-three point something get--!" and then together we roared "OUT ALIVE!" We collapsed after that, both of us breathless and shaking with laughter that couldn't be heard because the music from the player swallowed it up. Carana was on the floor, slamming her palm against it in delight. She had totally forgotten to care about her wet nails. I was practically convulsing, but I managed to stumbled to her side before I died of hilarity, and I fell down beside her. My cheeks were wet. I've never been happier than I was right then. From the other side of the wall, where an old man lived alone, there came a furious banging and some muffled shouts. That just made everything perfect. 

All gone now. 


	14. journal of angel morjo, sixth entry

"Listen," Carana said. "There's something. There's a secret I've been keeping." 

I think I knew before she said it. She had been going out at night sometimes, making vague, half-hearted statements about "some of us" going "just wandering around." I had felt her slipping away. I stopped telling her my thoughts, because I knew she wasn't telling me hers anymore. Something returned between us: the line of separation. I guess when there's one thing you fear, you're tuned to that frequency. "You won't believe it," she said.

I said, "Probably not."

"The new guy. My new clients; the dad. It's him I'm seeing tonight." She added - completely unnecessarily - "I've been seeing him for a while."

I didn't know which gutted me worse: that she had someone in her life who rivaled me, or that she'd kept it secret. Not that I would have wanted to know. I said, "Oh, well, I figured." It seemed important to pretend to be fine with it.

She said, "I knew you wouldn't approve. Or I would have told you sooner. I just couldn't stand the thought of you yelling at me for it. And you seem... different lately." 

So I was the bad guy. And I was the different one. I was only different because she was different first. When had I ever done anything but cheerlead for her two-week romances? 

Carana said defensively, "It's my year away from real life. I'm young. I get to play."

"Sure," I said. "Jesus and Chris Westerling won't mind."

"I broke it off with Chris. I'm not a cheat." 

"I'm glad you're happy," I told her. I wanted to remind her of Jiri's wife and kids, but I didn't dare alienate her further. She had a distant look in her eye, like love was blooming in front of her and she'd already forgotten I was there. I knew it was her right to fall in love. I knew I should be happy for her. If it hurt me that was my own damn problem and I should smile and keep it to myself.


	15. Chapter 15

needed:  
1\. Understanding of why Angel neded carana so badly: alone in the world, no family, afraid of going back to US alone; needed an atttachment, let carana fill her world.

2\. Understanding of the impending doom for Angel: she is being used at Theta for the destruction of her own people and callahan cares about her but doesn't really care about her loved ones. So a conflict between Angel thinking admiringly about the Karth, and Callahan planning their deaths. Angel thinking how jaro saved her and Callahan talking to others about how to kill jaro. Then going happily to Angel and being glad she's doing well. Maybe he is increasingly uneasy as she talks about the Karth. Realizes he has put real people in danger - people Angel cares about - tells himself that he's giving HER a good life and, well, it won't matter what's done in the Kar paval because she's American and he'll take care of her.

3\. Consider: Chapters devoted to the background of carana/angel: story of friendship gone wrong, and Angel's loneliness and her age-of-heroes philosophy. Debate between her and Carana about fighting (heroism) versus loving surrender (Valjean). Maybe Carana represents Valjean's side: sacrifice for love.

/////////////notes.... 

It had been her idea that someone should guard the booth. She had criss-crossed Europe the summer before - WorldTeach had paid an advanced stipend to cover plane fare, and her father's death during her junior year had covered the Eurail pass with some left over - and considered herself an old hand at making do. On a train if you got a booth to yourself you could slide out the three adjacent seats and make a bed as comfortable as a youth hostel's. You got a roof over your head and sanctuary until sunrise, so you didn't wind up under an overpass on the edge of town, hoping the local cops didn't shake you awake in your bag at three a.m., yelling and gesticulating down the empty road. They'd need any sleep they could grab tonight, since the train would hit Vuro at three-fifty in the morning. It wasn't likely they'd get any rest there - not in a strange place with their nerves strung tight thinking of the job ahead of them. Angel had already decided that they should set out for Vostyen Street as soon as it was light enough to read the street signs. 

They argeue about Quentin... 

Callahan: "You hate him, don't you. I think he's a working man like the rest o us. 

Theresa: "No. I can't him; it wouldnt be fair. He doesn't make the calls. They come to him with the jobs they need done and then he comes to us. He's just the handler. He's never made a decision in his life. If we deliver for him, he delivers for his bosses, and everybody's happy. We're all chained together in the service of.... I don't know what. Someone's getting rich off all of us; that's what I think. Some pople get killed and some people get rich; that's what I think. That's the game." 

I work for my country. I believe in my country." 

"Well. I believe in my husband." kinda reluctant about it, but making her mind up that she'll support him even if she hates what he's involved in. They kiss. 

He warns her that the company is drawing him in; it's geting involved. and serious. 

She says, My conscience is clear. My hands are clean. Do what you want, and I will love you; I just don't want to know nything and I don't want to be draged nto it. Understand? Brick wall between me and the company. I don't want to get dirty. anymore. Is that a deal?" 

It's a deal," he says.

At twenty-three she had just recently grown an understanding that time moves in only one direction and because of that, as much as she wanted the train to fire into motion and carry her toward her glory, she also wanted to keep this moment: the wanting and exhilaration, the on=edge and wildly-alive of it. It would pass and she would be just Angel again. But tonight she was more.  
At twenty-three she had just recently grown an understanding that time moves in only one direction and because of that, as much as she wanted the train to fire into motion and carry her toward her glory, she also wanted to keep this moment: the wanting and exhilaration, the on=edge and wildly-alive of it. It would pass and she would be just Angel again. But tonight she was more.

They thumped down the stone staircase together, four flights of stairs their steps heavy because of their jouncing backpacks, their sandals striking hollow echoes from the close-set walls. They walked to the Metro stop two blocks away and rode the trolley side by side, but Carana remained withdrawn and Angel avoided looking directly at her. She was afraid that if she looked at Carana, her friend would say, "Let's not. This is crazy." And she could not tolerate that. They were supposed to be together in this: comrades and heroes, side by side. 

NOTES: point of chapter is to set characters. Angel, the knockaround girl who dreams of heroism and has a Greek-myth worldview. And to introduce the whatever-the-hell that's about to happen at Vuro. Also consider - this chapter seen through Angel;s self-deception that she's the greatest friend Carana could have. Later chapters reveal the dark side of their friendship, namely that Angel has a fatal flaw of (jealousy/possessiveness/fear of being left out) that is (a) why she has spurred this trip and (b) why - along with her heroism - why she will choose what she chooses on the train. Parallel to Achilles/Patroclus/fatal flaw. So maybe in this chapter there are just hints - that Angel is stabbed with disappointment/impatience over Cari being worried rather than delighted by the girls' road trip. AND that Angel, on the night she crossed the room to talk Cari into the trip was actually hurt and frightened and angry (because Cari had just said she truly loved Jiri and maybe wanted to stay in Prague instead of traveling with Angel after the WorldTeach year). AND that when she sees Cari with the flirtatious boys in the dining car, her first reaction is pain. 

Only two trains a week left Prague's station for the capital Sokhrina; most stopped short at Sofia. Until two nights ago she had never thought of going there. When she stepped off the train with Carana, they'd be in terra incognita. They had only the rough beginnings of a plan. They'd get into Vuro in the dark. They'd scope out the situation. They'd make up the next steps on the wing. 

Other possibilities in this chapter: They read the travel book out loud to introduce Arbeztan's layout/ethnic groups. Angel talks about her Karth parents or upbringing. Angel mentions her language skills. Angel mentions the plans she and Carana had half-made, to travel after Prague. Angel talks about where her savings come from - the small inheritance of a few K after her dad's death. (Which would make dad not extremely poor; maybe just a miser/saver. Maybe money was set aside for Angel and turns out her dad actually loved her more than she'd suspected; maybe this is tied in to why she fled Boston for Prague. Carana babbles about Jiri this, Jiri that. Angel snaps primly that "it's wrong" to be with a married guy and/or be messing around with a WorldTeach client; Carana rightly saying that Angel doesn't give a damn about those things; she just doesn't like Jiri/doesn't like Carana being with Jiri. Angel defending herself by saying "He ditched his first wife for his nanny. He might ditch his second wife for his kids' English tutor. When you're wife number three, who do you think he's gonna ditch you for?" 

She wondered if Carana had gotten the addresses of the boys. This happened all the time in Prague; scraps of paper fell out of Carana's pocket. Sometimes she liked the guy and sometimes she was just too polite to walk away - and sometimes the scraps were meant for Angel. Carana had a habit of pointing out the virtues of potential boyfriends for Angel. It had gotten worse since she had taken up with Jiri.

............................ 

Carana wasn't rugged or adventurous - that was Angel - and had been adored all her life by a loving family in a city Angel had barely heard of, in a state that was wholesome and famous for potatoes. Angel had taken care of things for her all year - dragging her home when she was drunk, getting the heat fixed when it went out, buying food for both of them because Cari overran her stipend almost every month. It made Angel supremely happy to do those things. She'd take care of Carana all the way to Arbeztan and back. 

That night at Havli Nam I could see the storm gathering above the train platform. Carana was outside of the booth we'd picked, standing guard to make sure we got all the seats to ourselves. We had both ditched out packs in the booth and I had kicked off my sandals too, because they'd rubbed a blister into my heel. I loved Carana that night. That's the main thing you have to remember. I stood in the narrow corridor, barefoot, looking out through the open door to the heavy clouds that bloomed like wet roses, and electricity sang through me, and I loved Carana.


	16. journal of angel morjo, third entry

We argued about god a lot that fall. Carana would have written it with a capital G. 

I didn't grow up with any recognizable religion - the only god my father had was when he wanted something damned. The book of myths, though, that I won in a second-grade raffle: it had gold-embossed letters on the cover, over a picture of Pegasus soaring and Bellaraphon astride him, sword raised - that was my holy book. At night after my dad would go to bed, I stayed up late - the sofa in the TV room was my bed - and by the light of the bare-bulb lamp, with the Citgo sign blinking not far from the window, I hunched and read and took myself away. 

I was the unspectacular kind of kid who dreams of glory, and I was alone a lot - my father didn't much talk to me, and my friends were the watery-thin kind that might play with me at recess or shoo me away, and I was smart enough that school didn't keep my attention - so ancient Greece grew around me like I had been born to it. I rowed with the Argonauts; I painted myself into the amphoras and tapestries; in my mind I had a bow, a spear, a code of honor, a valiant band of comrades at my side. I saw what kids were like, and I liked the Greek heroes better. I aspired to ideals of courage and sacrifice. I didn't have a where friends died for each other and the Fates stood over cradles shaking their heads. In high school, when I used to run along the river for miles, leaping curbs and dodging strollers, I'd tell myself I couldn't stop because of Pheidippides, because what if the news from Marathon was in my pocket. Among the gods I loved Artemis because she was vengeful and untouchable, and Athena because she was strong and armor-clad. 

But that year in Prague, I half came to love Jesus too. Carana taught me about him. She was serious about him, which would have made me laugh if I hadn't loved her so much. She liked him because he helped the poor and gave her eternal life, and so on. I was more impressed with other things about him: I was drawn to the story of one man alone, knowing his fate but not turning away from it. I could close my eyes and see him doggedly lugging a huge cross up a hill, past the crowds who had once loved him and now spat on him. I was sucked in by his nobility at, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," and for his stoic agony in his last hours, and most of all his breaking point at the end when he cried out. But I still remained true to the rules of ancient Greece. 

Carana said I couldn't have two theologies; I had to choose. 

"If you're Christian, you can't go for revenge," she said. "You're supposed to turn the other cheek and love your enemies and have faith that justice comes from God." 

I told her it sounded good in the abstract. But I knew what the world was like from my father's drunken rants against the Arbezi. Carana didn't know that whole peoples could be exterminated like roaches, if they turned the other cheek. 

"I mean it," she said. "You can't get revenge on people who hurt you, or it never stops." 

"It stops when they kill you all, if you don't fight back." I pointed out that if my dad's ancestors hadn't fought, there would be no Karth left and she'd be sharing the apartment with a whole different girl, maybe one way less cool than me. After my dad's death I started caring about his background. I saw myself as a descendant of a fierce, proud people, the continuation of my father's blood. 

That night in Vuro, I was thinking of these things.


	18. Chapter 18

prelude. two girls on the train  
1\. Angel's life. Callahan's life. Zanir's life.  
2\. Death of Azor; callahan reacts and goes to washington.  
3\. Angel is hunted.  
4\. Callahan and wife. Call from Angel.  
5\. Angel en route to DC, dozing in teh back seat: thinking of the mountains. Angel sees callahan again after all this time.  
6\. Callahan sells Angel to Quentin. Sees Angel in hotel room and they agree on the plan.  
7\. Angel at Theta base; the intake.  
8\. Callahan's new life now that he is being given leeway. His excitement over it. Keeping an eye on Angel from afar.  
9\. Angel, language school, Cabrese. Damon and pythias.  
10\. Journal: I loved Carana. That's how it was. We used to argue about what it meant to be a hero. I wanted to be valjean because he was noble. But I also wanted to be Theseus. This was a paradox, probably common among people. Most of the time you don't have to choose. Valjean cheated, is the thing: he was a sharpshooter and enormously strong and rich and very lucky. Anyway, I could have lived a happy life and never had to choose, but things happened when the train stopped outside Vuro. And I'm no sharpshooter and no kind of hero so I just had to choose.  


......... Angel loved Carana. They talk about family, maybe. Carana is family to Angel. Other points: Angel values her physical strength; loved crew because it was heroic. Watches the crew on the Vtava, thinks of Scylla. 11\. Callahan arrives in Arbeztan  
12\. Angel and Cabrese fight  
13\. Angel, the next day, with Miranda.  
14\. Journal: I loved Carana and I was happy because at last I had family. Maybe it would have been different if I'd had my own family, but I don't know; maybe even if I'd had twenty sisters I still would have loved her best of all. Flashback: five to one baby.  


................... Carana meets Jiri. She's sexually adventurous; Angel laughes at her and doesn't take it seriously. The discuss Les Miserables and Valjean's heroism 15\. Callahan and Simontov, arguing about destruction of the Karth.  
16\. Angel developing physically. Tells Cabrese that it's getting hard to handle her memories.  


.................... Carana and Jiri get serious; Angel smiles politely while her insides twist. Carana is distant.  
17\. Callahan and Cabrese.  
18\. Callahan and Angel. She tells him things. About the mountains, that she fought there.  
19\. ............... : Carana repeats Jiri's proposal.  
21\. Callahan reporting to Quentin on Angel's words.  
22\. Cabrese and miranda, discussing the fact that Angel's clothes are bugged. Discussing the fact that Callahan loves Angel but will use her to destroy the Karth. "He's got his reasons for only seeing what he wants to see and only caring about what he wants to care about. It's like the preacher who rails against adultery and then fucks the choirmaster. He stays blind because it's easier than not."  
23..........On the train: Carana and Angel argue. The blond guy appears and Carana turns to him. Angel declares that she'll get off alone.  
24\. Angel POV. Cabrese steers her toward going back. Increasingly she is thinking about her heroic obligations to return to the kP. 25\. Quentin speaks to Callahan about recruiting Angel. Callahan is nervous. Quentin as much as promises that this will get him back into Ambassadorial. Cabrese tells Callahan that Angel has to go back to the mountains, regardless. 

Developing the background 

1\. Angel left Carana on the train 

2\. Angel fought for the Karth 

3, Angel loved Carana. They talk about family, maybe. Carana is family to Angel. Other points: Angel values her physical strength; loved crew because it was heroic. Watches the crew on the Vtava, thinks of Scylla. 

4\. Carana meets Jiri. She's sexually adventurous; Angel laughes at her and doesn't take it seriously. The discuss Les Miserables and Valjean's heroism 

5\. Carana and Jiri get serious; Angel smiles politely while her insides twist. Carana is distant. 

6\. Carana repeats Jiri's proposal. 

7\. On the train: Carana and Angel argue. The blond guy appears and Carana turns to him. Angel declares that she'll get off alone. 

8\. The train rumbles away. Carana, it turns out, followed Angel into the nght. 

9\. Angel and Carana in the dark. Angel tells Carana a story of heroism. The twins, maybe. Carana eventually refuses to go on. Angel goes off without her to scout the road. And then... 


	19. journal of angel morjo, fifth entry

One day when I was lying propped on my elbows, reading, Carana came home bursting with news. But she stopped when she saw me. 

"Oh, no," she said. "Let me guess." She bent closer. "That's the tenth time you've read that." 

"I know. It's a sickness. I keep hoping for a different ending, but it never happens. Cosette and Marius are always stupid, and Valjean always dies." 

"You know, I have Moby Dick around here somewhere if you want a change. Maybe the ship won't sink for you." 

"I don't care about whales and whale-killers. I don't think I could build up any enthusiasm." 

"And you care about old Frenchmen?" 

"I care about nobility and self-sacrifice. It's my thing, all right? Everyone needs a thing." 

"Okay, enough of Lit 101. Listen - I have actual news! Important news. Listen to what just happened." I sat up. "The new family I picked up - the one I told you about, with the handsome father? Guess what happened." 

"Oh, no," I said. "He didn't." 

"In the kitchen! While his wife was in the other room and the kids had gone upstairs. And, oh my God, I shouldn't have, but, you know. Wow." She bit her lip winningly. 

"So, you didn't stop him? He must be cute. God, you're insane." The fathers came on to Carana all the time. She usually shut them down in a way that kept them from trying again, ever. 

"Hey now. Everyone needs a thing. And, you know, for me it isn't men of fiction. It's men of flesh." 

"Hard flesh?" I gave her a sidelong, one-eyebrow-up kind of look. 

"The harder the better. You have to see him to believe him. You would have done it, too." 

Maybe. Except that beautiful males didn't usually choose me. "Didn't you say he was on his second marriage? How old is this guy? If he's in the government, it's an international scandal in the making. Not to mention, Jason will kill you." 

"I'm good for business. Who wouldn't hire me to teach their kids English?" She struck a sexy pose, hip out. She was delighted with herself. 

"The mothers, idiot. The ones who usually do the hiring." I rolled my eyes. 

I had known girls like Carana at college, beautiful, perfect girls who toppled every guy just by smiling in their direction. This was different, though. This wasn't college, where hookups were expected; it was the real adult world. You weren't supposed to topple family men, government men, men who mattered. Carana liked to turn heads, and who wouldn't, but it gave me a scared, forgotten feeling to think of her messing in that adult world. She burned through boys like flame through paper, and I didn't have a problem with that - but this was different. 

I had seen her in action at a publicity even thrown by Jason in the fall, held in the ballroom of the Bila Strela hotel. He had hired a blues quartet and arranged for pizza and McDonalds burgers and advertised in Prognosis, billing it as an American Fair. The staffers were all under orders to show up and mingle with the crowd, and the Canadians among them were ordered to hide their nationality. I geared up for it with two shots of vodka, which had helped a little. Carana, on the other hand, had mingled with a vengeance. We walked home together after midnight, when I was stone sober and intensely irritable. "Why do you _do_ that?" I asked her, as soon as we were outside in the street and alone. 

"Do what? What are you all angry about?" 

"That doe-eyed, hair-flippy thing. You know what I mean. It's like you want them all to want you." 

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Carana was frosty, and taken aback. It struck me that she might really not know what she looked like. 

Now, however, Carana was eager to talk. "His name is Jiri. I hate that it has the erzh in it. Fuck the erzh and all diacriticals." 

"Well, don't fuck Jiri. Have a little class." I shouldn't have said it. Something about Carana's delight made me feel mean. 

"Hey. What the hell?" 

I knew I'd gone too far. "I just don't want Jason busting you. You're acting all smitten." 

Carana was quiet. "I'll be careful," she said after a minute. 

I put it out of my mind. I told myself that Carana was always involved with some guy or other, and it never meant anything more than a funny story to tell me on Sunday morning two weeks later, after she broke up with him.


	20. Chapter 20

Ch 1. ANGEL'S DIARY written before she leaves for the mountains. "On the night we left Prague, the two of us, I stood bright as a flame." Two girls take the train to Arbeztan. We learn that they are involved in something. They discuss Angel's philosophy, which is "do the brave thing." Angel loves Carana but is insecure. They mention Angel's rowing and physical strength. Angel maybe reveals that she thinks of war as it was presented in teh Iliad - battles and glory and comradeship. Carana pursues a couple guys. In the end, the train stops and there are explosions up ahead.

Ch 2. Angel lives a small life in Boston. She is still thinking about that last moment on the train when she left Carana. She has PTSD and looks over her shoulder a lot.  
\--Callahan and his wife argue over their marriage and his career.  
\-- in the mountains, a young boy heads off with a pistol.

Ch. 3. Callahan tells his wife that Azor is dead. They touch on the past. Reference to Callahan's ability to put things in different boxes and not let the parts of his brain talk to each other.

Ch 3.5. ANGEL DIARY: "I was made to love only one person at a time. I think that was the great tragedy. I was a strange girl, growing up - a loner you would say. I had friends sometimes, but we fought, or they moved on, or maybe they saw a flaw in me. Maybe they knew I wanted too much of them.... I fell in love with Carana the way you'd fall in love with your own self in the mirror, downing beers in the OTS - that's the Old Town Square - at a cafe near the clock. It was the first damn night of orientation and we'd drawn each other as roommates, so we went there to check each other out." 

Ch 4. Callahan and Quentin discuss Azor, the Karth, and Callahan's faltering career. He is told to contact Cabrese.

Ch 5. Angel remembers the train. She checks her mailbox; reads the notes from Jamie. Goes out. Is threatened by the Arbezi stalker. The next night, it happens again and she calls Jamie.

Ch 6. Callahan and Theresa discuss the company and its ethics. The phone rings.

Ch 7. Angel, in a car bound for Virginia, dozes in the back seat. Maybe she remembers how they met, at Marchev. She sees him. She is ashamed of the life she has made. He questions her about her background with the Karth. After denying it, she admits she is Karth, speaks Karthic, lived in the mountains, and knows Jaro Kozlan.

Ch 8. Callahan convinces Quentin to hire Angel as a Theta consultant. Maybe he remembers the horror of entering Marchev... and then learning of Angel, the American. Reading off a list of names of Americans missing in Arbeztan, and her looking up when he heard Carana named. Then he presents the job to her. He notices that she is twitchier even than the day before. She says yes.

Ch 8.5. We were 23. Carana was beautiful and I was happy. Until Jiri came between us. 

Ch 9. Angel is settled at Theta. She hasn't slept in 3 days. She thinks of the Karth, where she fought. She is not necessarily looking forward to speaking it again. Growing up, it was her father's language and it made her angry when he spoke it to her. In the mountains, it was the language of war. At end of chapter, she is interrogated by the base security personnel. Then goes to the meeting with Cabrese.

Ch 10. Cabrese questions Angel briefly. Then looks forward to his next appointment.  
\--Callahan POV: watching the film, waiting for Cabrese. Making himself not look away from the moment Azor falls. Thinking about the old days; the friendship they had shared. Cabrese comes and Callahan acts cool; they review the film. Callahan's phone rings and it transpires that Cabrese will meet him in an hour for a CDD.

Ch 11. CDD.

Ch 12. Angel's first day at work: Catherine Lund. In the evening, she feels lost, wanders the base.

Ch 13. Callahan's new life: same as the old, but now with meetings and discussions of Arbeztan, arranged by Quentin. Finally gets a call saying he has been approved to talk to Simontov; the plan is to befriend him and play it by ear; no set return date. He discusses this with Theresa. Then he goes to see Cabrese, who wont let him say goodbye to Angel.

ch13.5. ANGEL DIARY: she stayed out; I stayed home. It hurt me. I hid the hurting. I knew I was supposed to be a good friend. 

Ch 14. Angel and Catherine, then a meeting with Cabrese. The chat about nothing. Finally she tells him the story that matters to her: Damon and Pythias. He gives her a notebook. She goes home and writes the first sentence of chapter one.

Ch 15. Angel and Carana, happy together in Prague. Boys. Angel's delight to have family, and need nothing else. Discussion of what they'd do afterward: travel in June. Carana is worried Angel will blow all her money, notes that her situation is different because she has a family. Angel says, I got a sister. If I go broke, I'll hitchhike to Boise, penniless and in rags and Carana says, "I'd love that. We'd get a place together, find us a sugar daddy. Speaking of which..." She tells about Jiri.

Ch 16. Callahan and Simontov getting reacquainted. Callahan's job is to charm Simontov. He decides that talking about Azor will bond them. They also speak of the Karth. Simontov wants them dead. Callahan thinks of American interests. To secure the mines, the Karth will either have to be blasted into submission or paid off, or some combination. They speak of the Rachatan.

Ch. 17. Cabrese fights with Angel. 

Ch 18. Next morning, Angel learns what he has in mind for her.

ch 19. Callahan returns six weeks later. Talks to wife, to Cabrese. They make plans for him to start talking to Angel re her information. 

Ch 20. Angel climbs down from a boulder and sees Callahan. Walks with him, talks about the Karth. Goes back in her mind to that world. Talks about Jaro and the reasons they fought. "We want our own place." She asks Callahan if he ( being a government worker) can help broker a treaty. He explains that he doesn't do that. He manages the problems of American businesses. She tells him the problems of the Karth people in sympathetic terms. Sheis thinking about the dreary drag of it. It was not like the Iliad; no chariots or heroism. People died and she shot them dead; she was tired and cold and hungry but she had to do the right thing. She asks Callahan if it's illegal to fight in a war on foreign soil. She reveals that Cabrese determines who she sees and where she goes. End of chapter: She thinks of Carana, who was choosing Jiri over her.

Ch 21. Cabrese at tthe Block. Callahan comes to him, angry that he is influencing Angel to such a degree. He says it's for her own good. Angel comes to him, says her memories are starting to hurt her. He says he'll increase her hour with Miranda. Finally Miranda comes to him, asks his plan. They discuss the fact that the Karth boy is useless and losing his mind. 

Ch. 22. Callahan and Angel: He draws out her stories of hte mountains. She tells him that she fought. She had to fight; it was the right thing. She fought for the Karth because the Arbezi were terrible. "You have to choose a side. Like, if someone killed your friend, what would you do? Let them get away with it? No. You have to fight. It's pretty basic. It's the right thing to do. I didn't like killing people but I had to. Anyway, it gets easy. The first time, you vomit and when you're done vomiitng you say, "I'm not the monster; he's the monster. I deserve to die." And the second time, you celebrate because you've stepped on a roach. It's them or you." Callahan asks, didn't it bother you? and Angel said, "I had to do the right thing." She remembers: 

Ch. 23. Carana tells Angel the proposition.

Ch 24. Callahan talking to Simontov about the planned intervention. He hangs up and thinks of Angel's future. She's American; the deaths in teh mountains don't have to touch her; she'll never even know about them. He tells Quentin that they have to move fast or Simontov willl not be able to wait for America to quit dragging its feet. He also says he wants Angel taken care of. She needs a permanent job. 

Ch 25. Later, Cabrese with Angel: You have to go back. It's the only way to be free. And then Quentin calls Callahan in; says there's interest in a stealth mission to negotiate with the Karth. Angel could lead the team. 

Callahan is with his wife; he's nervous. He talks Angel into it. She mentions that the mountains are mined and that she always believed it was her destiny to die there. She mutters, "Do the brave thing." 

Ch. 26. Angel and Carana on the train. Explosions. They argue. Angel gets off alone. Carana follows her out. 

Ch 27: She seeks out Cabrese and tells him the end of the story. Not Damon and Pythias, but Achilles and Patroclus. She tells the story of Carana's death. She wants Carana's parents to know what happened. "I'm going to write what happened so if I don't come back..." Cabrese warns her that the parents will not want to hear Carana suffered. 

Ch 28. Callahan learns the truth. 

Snakebite scene. 

Angel in the mountains. 


	32. Chapter 32

_I promised Carana we'd be back in Prague before spring break was over._

_We were quiet that last day as we got ready. When I pulled my backpack down from the closet shelf, it still smelled of dirt and grass and all the muddy fields I'd slept in the previous summer. I looked over at Carana, but she wasn't looking back. She was bending over her pack, the one Ohio Mark had lent her, frowning as she took her clothes back out for the tenth time and refolded them and packed them in again. I knew she was trying to find a way of keeping out the wrinkles. On a different day, I would have made fun of her for that. She didn't know about backpacks because she'd been raised on designer suitcases; also on church pews and picket fences and parental adoration. I loved Carana, and from the day we'd met I'd recognized her as the other half of my soul - but I was a tough girl and a wannabe vagabond hero, and she was something else._

 _On the day we left, I loved her, same as on the day we'd met - but things had changed between us. I could name the exact night it had happened. We used to laugh all the time, sharing the same point of view as if we stood in the same shoes, but one evening in January the ground had split beneath us and carried us away from each other. Now I didn't trust her to laugh anymore when I tried to be funny. My jokes came out strained, and she would smile politely, not like before when we'd fall down, weak-kneed and convulsing over the general hilarity of our daily life. It was like we had both lost our sense of humor. So on that day, I watched her pack her favorite jeans, her sunglasses, the white flippy skirt and so forth, and I knew that even though we were setting out together, her thoughts and mine were winging along separate paths. I was beginning to thrill to the dare that lay ahead of us, but Carana wasn't, and I knew it. I watched her refold her clothes and set them into the pack, and I said nothing._

_I was done packing way before she was, because I liked traveling light and all clothes were pretty much alike to me. I packed my sleeping bag and also a sheet for Carana, who wasn't likely to think of that herself. I shoved my journal into the bottom of the pack as an afterthought. I hardly ever wrote in it. Mostly I carried it under my arm to Cafe Slavia like every other expat poser in the city, and wrote maybe a sentence while I sipped Turkish coffee in a window seat and watched Prague's endless parade flow by on the sidewalk of Narodni U._

_Finally, I buckled the pack's top flap and swung it up to my shoulders to test the weight. It was so light, it practically bounced._

_The only decision I had trouble with that afternoon was what to put on my feet. I kept looking unhappily at my ugly battered sneakers, which were indestructible but hideous, and made my short stubby legs look even shorter and stubbier than nature had formed them. In college I'd worn them every day, had criss-crossed Europe in them all summer, worn them most of my year at TeachPrague as I trudged between the Metro and the upscale homes of the clients. But at the end of February, on a night twisted by vodka and loneliness, I had done something out of character - blown half my monthly stipend on a pair of delicate gold-strapped sandals that caught my eye in a shop window. They reminded me of Hermes, god of thieves and travelers. I remember telling myself the sandals would give me a new start under his protection. I used to cling to ideas like that. I was always tilting up a corner of the mundane world and pretending there was a hidden gilt edge on the underside. I never actually believed the superstitious crap I made up; it was just a habit I'd fallen into as a kid when I generally had nothing much to count on but ugly sneakers, neglect and exclusion, stolen cigarette butts, petty theft. I cultivated a pretend-belief in the supernatural to make things look prettier than they were._

_It was on my mind that afternoon to wear the golden sandals in appreciation of the mythic nature of our journey. But I was practical, too. Vuro, our destination, was a city neither of us knew, and it lay across two borders in a country no one ever talked about. I couldn't have found Arbeztan on a map the day we left, even though I grew up hearing my father rage about it, or against it, almost as much as he raged against America. We had a job to do once we reached Vuro, and we hadn't completely worked out the details in advance, but it would probably require a lot of walking. A golden strap might break at the worst moment. I had always prided myself on being rugged and ready for anything, and not vain or silly like girls I steadfastly looked down on. There was also Carana to think about. I had sworn in my heart to protect if she ever needed protecting, from anything, from anyone. For her sake, I had to have shoes I could count on._

_So I did the right thing. I put the golden sandals on the high shelf of the closet where I wouldn't be tempted. I wore the ugly sneakers. That's why I lived through the night._

_Carana went out after lunch to meet Jiri, and when she came back she held out the yellow envelope. I didn't miss the hint of fear in her eyes. "You carry it," she said. Even now, I can hear her low voice. I can see the tense set of her mouth and her lean bare arms and blue t shirt. We were standing together in the tiny kitchen. It was almost too late, but we didn't know it._

 _I took the papers and tucked them into the cheap travel pouch under my shirt. And that's when it struck: a ragged thrill that streaked out along all my nerves, lighting me up, because suddenly I could see the future in a flash. I could see us boarding the train, the doors closing, the engine kicking into life. My heart clutched. I was taut as a spring and my lips drew back, making me grin at her in a fierce, involuntary way._

_Right around sunset we left the apartment. She went out first. I locked the door behind us and pocketed the key. We hoisted up our backpacks. We thumped down the narrow stone stairs, four flights, out into the street. We walked to the metro. It was close to sunset and the spires glowed, and the ripples on the Vltava smashed the slanted sunlight into flakes of gold. She was still nervous, and now there was a viciousness in me, because I was determined not to care. I was electrified with a high, soaring excitement just like any moth rushing into any flame. At the station we boarded the train._

 _It horrifies me now, to imagine Carana's family around their kitchen table, gray and quiet, all looking toward the empty chair. I try not to think of them. I can picture them all too clearly from all the stories she used to tell me, all those times in the fall and winter when we stayed up most of the night talking in our bedroom until one of us fell asleep. She wanted me visit her the next year, when TeachPrague was over and we both went back to our regular lives. She'd be in grad school at UIdaho and married to Chris Westerling. I'd be back in Boston, getting by somehow. I'd get plane fare and I'd meet them all at last - the handsome brother, the dog, the nice home with the backyard where her mother grew tomatoes and where they used to play volleyball at cookouts with the neighbor kids. That's the kind of family Carana had. Mine was different. All I had was her._

_All night we hurtled down the tracks. I will always remember it, because it was the best night of my life. I was wilder and stronger than I'd ever been, lit inside with a fire that burned white-hot and flashed behind my eyes. I stood astride the train as it thrummed beneath me, my bare feet spread for balance and my toes digging into the rubbery corrugated floor. It was my ship and I was its captain and my best friend was beside me; my blood up, and a fair wind driving me toward destiny. Out the windows, where the countryside lay as dark as the open ocean, my mind painted waves and spits of rocky land. I was thinking of all those nights as a kid when I'd lain awake reading on the ratty sofa, getting lost in the Age of Heroes while my dad snored and the famous Kenmore Square Citgo sign beat a slow, blood-red pulse against the cracked window. That night on the train, it struck me that all my life and strength had brought me at last to the adventure I was made for. Up ahead, the glowing shores of Ilium beckoned me on._

_Once, the train jolted as we rounded a curve. Carana lost her balance. She lurched awkwardly and I grabbed for her hand. Where our skin met, I tried to send the current of my strength into her body to tell her it would all be great. In every revolution of the wheels, I heard our names sung out in triumph. We were more than best friends. She was my only family and the other half of my soul, and I was invincible enough to protect both of us. Hubris, the Greeks called it._

_Not that any of that matters now. The truth is stark. We crossed the border into Arbeztan on the eve of a civil war. I took my best friend into danger. I didn't bring her back.  
_

She painted her lips, sighed, and locked up behind her.

Callahan understood people. It had come naturally to him at a young age, and his skill had refined itself naturally through the years, as he came into the orbits of important people - but there wasn't much difference between charming a local cop and charming a head of state. People were astonishingly easy to win over. He wondered why everyone didn't know this. His wife, for example: she didn't have the first clue how to present herself so that people would adore her. He had tried to coach her on it, early in their relationship, and she had looked at him like he was crazy and had said, "Don't. Don't ever." 

Callahan in the embassy, making connections. Maybe meets the unassuming Eddie Tsang who will later feature. Maybe asks about the state prison where he saw torture. Maybe hears of families still suffering from Marchev. His guilt, his desire to save Angel, are fresh. Trying to reconcile the horror of Marchev and the official line that the Karthic leaders are terrorists and must be defeated. Going to the place Marchev once stood, which is now plowed under.

Callahan converses with Theresa. Her dad is in the hospital. Medication mix-up. Theresa explains that he took the short-acting meds instead of the long-acting meds. Dropped his blood pressure. He's home from hospital now. She's making him a chart so he can keep track. She's worried he's losing his memory. 

Callahan returns home. Falls into her arms for comfort. He and his wife talk. He tries to convince her that what he's working towards - a trade agreement with Beztan tho he can't quite reveal that - will be good for the US and bad for no one. She makes it clear that she loves him; they love each other.

He has to see quentin soon - thinks he's done well; thinks quentin is bound to see his usefulness. Hopes to see Angel soon and wonders how she's been. Is a little wary of seeing cabrese. 

And Theresa? A few paragraphs on her thoughts. Watching the company devour her husband bit by bit. She loves him BUT. She doesn't bend. She draws a hard line - she is not tainted by living with him, unless she does something she cant forgive (and she finds out, which isn't likely) OR she gets dragged into company ugliness. 

She wants him happy but wont lose her soul over it.

She stood beside Miranda on the loop trail. They were near the south end of Theta, where the trail plunged up its steepest slope to the base of a giant beech. Miranda used her sneakered toe to draw a line in the mud. It had been raining for three days straight; Angel's running clothes were still damp from the night before and, since she had thrown them in a lump outside her shower and forgotten to hang them afterward, they smelled rank as well. Her hair hung in curling tendrils on her forehead and dripped into her eyes. It crossed her mind that she hadn't had a haircut in months.

"Ten times," said Miranda, nodding toward the crest of the hill. They lined up side by side. "Three. Two. One. Go." 

She pounded herself against the hillside. It wasn't the pain she loved, the forced agony of every stride and every burning lungful, but the erasure of everything she was. Running, she was nothing but a body. The Angel Morjo in her - mind and memory and torment - was laid to rest. She didn't talk or think. She just hurt and obeyed and endured. She fell exhausted into her bed each night. Each morning, the door buzzer came too soon. She stumbed through her days aching in every sinew, sometimes nodding off over lunch. But she didn't mind. She could feel her strength returning to her. Twice a week she could stand in Dr. Cabrese's office and meet his level gaze with pride. 

Dr. Cabrese might be watching her right now. She liked to imagine that he was nearby: unsmiling and vigilant under the trees, sizing up her efforts. She pushed herself harder. She felt like Hercules, when the gods had ordered him to sit at the feet of a Greek queen and holding her thread as she wove. It was the same for her. She had been set a challenge that proved both her heroism and her humility. 

Her legs were jelly by the time she completed the ten sprints. Carana lapped her easily and was waiting under the beech tree, already recovered and breathing easily, by the time she finished. As they set off along the loop, the throb of her bad hip made itself known. She took it for granted now. It didn't exactly hurt less; it just bothered her less. 

They stopped at a boulder. "Try this one again," Miranda said. 

Every evening, there was a boulder to climb. Angel was no good at it, which made her angry with herself. She had climbed up from Vuro over rocks and cliffs, hand over hand, gripping thorn bushes close to the ground and hoping they could be trusted to hold her. Explosions had rocketed against the slopes below her. She had been dead inside and had felt no fear; also she had been twenty-three and lithe and had trusted her body without recognizing that youth and strength were not permanent endowments. Now she was older and heavier. The strength of her grip had been damaged by broken fingers. The damage to her left hip limited the reach of her foot. Sometimes she came close to tears, clinging desperately waiting for Miranda to finally call, "All right. Come down."

They ambled along the path. Jamie began talking - not about Marchev but about the low slopes of the Kar-Paval where he'd walked. He described a meal he had eaten in one of the _makak_ houses in a hillside village. "Roast lamb," he said. "Some kind of spice I can't describe." 

She lit up at the memory. "In thin slices, roasted on hot stones?" It was what the Karth ate high in the mountains in the fall and into the winter. Men dug the roasting pits and women did the butchering. The spices were traded or bought from Karth settlements low on the mountains; they came in packages with Arbezi writing on them. "The men used to complain that the _cha missin_ wasn't good, because their wives couldn't get the right spices during the war. I didn't know the difference." She had thought it bizarre that men who expected to die fighting their enemies still raged about the flavors of their wives' cooking. She had kept those thoughts to herself, though - she was enough of an outsider already. 

"I don't think there's another westerner who knows as much about the Karth as you do. It's a locked world. You should hear the way they talk in Sokhrina - as if the people of the mountains aren't citizens. As if they're hardly even people." 

"They think we're savages. It's always been that way." Her father had told her that and she had ignored him until she'd seen it for herself. Her father had been right all along and she'd been a spoiled American girl who didn't know anything. It must have broken his heart, in a way, to see her growing up with no loyalty to the mountains. Well, she had paid for her arrogance. The Arbezi words rang in her mind. _Karth dog. Whelp of a mountain rat._ The leering face of the stalker in Boston returned to her. 

"You know, it made me think of something. We have some pull with the Arbezi government - they want to stay on our good side and have favorable trade agreements. If we understood the Karth point of view, their grievances and what they need, we could apply pressure on Sokhrina. You could tell me about life in the mountains. I could convey it up the line. Maybe together we can do some good."

She would like to see Jamie in Sokhrina, grabbing the Arbezi leaders by the throat, kicking over a conference table, pulling a rifle and mowing them all down. That was the kind of thing Jaro and the others would do. America, however, was stronger and therefore more subtle. "You'd do that?" 

"Well, I won't lie - the US isn't in the business of charity. But the government's angle is that stability and peace benefit everyone, because ethnic rivalries and civil wars are no good for trade. For them it's just good business. For me, though, it's something more." He looked down. "What I saw at Marchev - I'll never forget it."

They had come around a corner to a stand of oak: her favorite spot on the loop, where one of the trees had a low branch that curved to make a seat. She leaned against it. 

"I could tell you about us. But I wouldn't even know where to start." It felt daunting already - like being asked to haul a bag of stones uphill. 

"Start anywhere. Why did the Karth fight the Arbezi when you were there?" 

"Because they fought us first." It was the kind of question a five-year-old might ask. 

"But why? On the Karth side, what's it all about?" 

"For longer than anyone can remember, they've fought us. My father left forty years ago. He told me stories of Arbezi soldiers setting whole villages on fire. Then, twenty years ago they invaded - the Arbezi army, armed to the teeth, swarming up the paths into the high mountains. We fought back with what we had: leftover Russian rifles, sticks and stones. Not me, I mean - the others; all the men of the villages stood to the defense of the mountains. We killed enough of them that they gave up, finally, but only after they killed us by the thousands, women and children too. Then they mined the paths behind them as they retreated. People still die from those mines. There's places we can't graze our animals; places where mothers warn their children to stay close." She turned on him. "All we ever wanted was to be left alone on our own land. Instead they kill us and we can't touch them. That's why one of us killed Mirtallev: because it's all we can do, understand? It's not much and it's not enough, but it's what we have." 

She jumped off the branch and strode along the path, angry now, not looking at Jamie. He meant well, but he was so damn blind and so damn comfortable. In Arbeztan he had probably been helping fat-cat American businessmen make millions. The Arbezi government probably profited from it as well. Jamie didn't know anything; he had never seen a Karth town pounded by artillery, kids screaming, a man's leg turned to a bloody stump with shreds of meat hanging from it. He was like the rest of the UN people who had come into Marchev in clean green uniforms with nametags clipped to the pocket, calling themselves liberators, making lists, doling out pity from on high. He was her rescuer - but when she thought of the Karth, her own people, he was an outsider. He would never understand. 

"Hey," he said. "I didn't mean to get you upset." 

_Upset?_ That was a word applied to elderly women and mental patients. She whirled on him. 

With a rifle on her shoulder, she had spent whole nights crouched in the dark, in a gap between two boulders, snow blowing around her, chin pulled down into the collar of her _yunro_. He had no idea what she was. He thought of her, of all the Karth, probably, as helpless. He thought they had just lain down and let the Arbezi be their masters. "Listen," she hissed. "Do you have any idea what I did in the mountains? I mean, what I really did?" 

"You lived with that family, didn't you?" 

"Suppose I didn't." She had put her foot too far out on the ledge, now; she couldn't turn back. "Suppose I did more than that." 

He stopped walking. "More - like what?" 

She thought. She didn't want to keep her secrets. She had so damn many. Maybe it would be all right to let one or two - the big ones, the heavy ones - slip past her guard. "If an American were to fight in a foreign war, would that be illegal?" 

"What are you saying?"

She wouldn't spell it out. He kept staring at her. "You _fought_ for them? For the Karth?"

"If I did - suppose - would I be in trouble for it?"

"The Karth were never at war with the US. So, no," he said. And then he added, "You fought. Really?" 

"I'm Karth." 

"You carried a weapon?" 

It was almost insulting, his disbelief. "Yes." 

"Why didn't you tell me this?" 

Secrets belong locked away, and she had rooms full of locked-up things. The inner door, the outer door, the bolt. He couldn't understand how she was, because his whole life was out in the open. 

"Is that how you know Jaro Koslan?" 

She nodded. "He was the commander of my cell." 

A breeze picked up and raised gooseflesh along her outer arms. Summer was drawing down. Soon fall would arrive. Here, it would probably mean a slow turning of the leaves to yellow and pumpkin-orange. In the mountains it would mean cottages boarded up, the windows stuffed with whatever was available. It would mean the women storing wool and packing sheepfat into jars. Jaro and the man would linger by the evening fires. They might be talking about her right now, wondering where she was. "That coward," someone might say. "The American girl showed her true heart. Took the first flight home as soon as she could. Left us to keep on fighting while she's safe and warm." 

"And you've never told anyone. What about Cabrese - does he know?" 

She hadn't thought of him finding out. "Don't tell him. Please." She wanted things to stay the way they were with Dr. Cabrese. He was her coach and her body belonged to him and he asked no questions and her mind stayed quiet. He was like the dark green world where she could rest on a bed of moss. 

It was getting dark. Dusk was a shield that made it easier to ask the question on her mind. "Have you ever done it?" she asked. 

"Done what?" 

She was thinking of his UN uniform. "Fought in a war." 

He let out a long sigh. "I got my start in the army," he said. "Was sent to the front lines, got caught up in some fighting. It wasn't regular fighting, though - just a desperate scramble to stay alive from one day to the next and take out as many of the bastards as we could." 

"Yeah," she said tonelessly. "That's how it was for us." She walked faster. "Did you hate it?" 

"Sometimes. You?" 

"At first, yeah. But I got to liking it after a while, you know. Not the fighting, but the killing." She stared out into the trees. "It started out hard, but it got easier. First I had to talk myself into it. Then I started loving it." 

He was quiet for a little while. "Yes," he said at last. "It was the same with me." 

"Walking home to my apartment in Boston, I'd look at people on the streets. I'd think, "None of them know what it's like." 

"That's it exactly. No one understands who hasn't been through it." 

They walked a little ways farther in silence. 

Jamie asked, "What kind of weapon did you carry - you and the others in your group?" 

"A _rakraake,_ it's called. Russian-made automatic. Mine was pretty old. A lot of the men had newer ones though. We had a couple suppliers who smuggled in arms and ammunition. When the shipments arrived, it would take four of us to drag them up the mountain on a travois, staying under the trees so we wouldn't be seen by the scouting flights. In the winter we used snowshoes. It would take six of us, dragging equipment up the slopes into the caves, racing against the dark, crouching when the planes flew over." 

They had come all the way around the loop so they were close to number 42. It was getting dark. "I should let you go," Jamie said. "Can I see you again tomorrow? I could buy you a coffee at the bistro after I get done with my work. We could trade war stories. We're a couple of old soldiers." 

Her heart leaped at the picture. She would like to sit with Jamie in a bistro, or in the woods, or anywhere. But she belonged to Dr. Cabrese. "I can't. After work, I always meet Miranda." 

"She'd understand. I'll let her know you have other plans." 

"It doesn't work like that." 

He laughed. "You can't have a single evening off? Why?" 

"I lost a bet." He was looking at her curiously, as if he thought she was making up excuses. "It's a long story." 

"So, okay, how about we meet for lunch, then. I'll be here at Theta all day." 

"I'd like that." She laughed. "But you'll have to ask Dr. Cabrese." 

"He keeps your social calendar?" 

"Pretty much." 

"Okay." He seemed a little put off. "Well, I'll talk to him then. I'll see if he can spare you." 

They had arrived at her door. For a moment he looked like he didn't want to leave. Then he said, "I'll see you soon," and she nodded. There was an awkward moment during which she wondered if she was expected to hug him or shake hands - it seemed a little like the last moment of a date - and in the end she just said, "Bye," and put the door between them. 

"The girl knows she's part wolf but she has no control over it. It's her nature and she's ashamed of it. Nobody in the village knows her secret. When sheep carcasses found in the morning with their throats torn open, the village men take action and call for a hunt. The hunt leader is her doting father or a young man who loves her. On the night before the hunt, she begs her young man not to kill the wolf. She tells him stories of wolf-lore and the beauty of all that's wild and free beyond the village." Jamie was watching her, listening with his whole self. She wasn't used to that. She blushed a little. "Sorry. I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"No, go on. I love stories."

She took a breath. "The man - because he loves her, he promises to safeguard the life of the wolf when the men of the village go hunting it. He says he'll make sure it's not killed, just driven off with fire. But when the hunt takes place, the hunting group changes subtly. The men goad each other into courage and then savagery, and finally they become brutes joking about what they'll do to the wolf, how they'll gouge its eyes out and kill it slowly while it howls. The young man is silent through all this. They end up trapping it in a three-sided ravine and advance to make the kill. The young man remembers his promise to his sweetheart. At the last moment he tells everyone to spare the wolf. But the other men taunt him for being as weak as a woman."

"Where did you read this?" Jamie asked. "Is this the same story I know?"

"It's everywhere," she told him darkly.

"So, how does it end?"

"Guess." 

She was sorry she'd brought it up. The ending was no damn good, and now she had a bitterness against Jamie. He wanted a sweet fairy tale, but there wasn't any fairy tale. Men were men and wolves got skinned alive.

"They kill it?"

"Her. Yes. The one who loves her, who's being taunted for being soft and feminine, he sticks his knife in first. When the other men see the wolf is too injured to threaten them, they become all so very brave and they charge in close and take turns sticking their knives in. But in its final moments, the wolf returns to human form: a naked woman stabbed to death, in a pool of blood. And they see what they've done." 

"They're grief-stricken," Jamie guessed. "The young lover, he throws himself off a cliff."

"Something like that."

"It sounds vaguely familiar." 

In the night, she thought about the wolf story. She hadn't told Jamie the real ending because he hadn't wanted to know it.

The mob of hunters with their bloody knives look upon the woman's body. For one moment, they are shocked at the sight of the naked female corpse torn open before them. For one moment they feel guilt.

But then one man - one of the timid ones who is always trying to secure his place among the others - spoke up. "The wolf killed her," he suggested. "Look - those gouges are the bites of a savage wolf. The beast must have caught her while she was hanging the washing, and dragged her out here to feast on her. Good thing we killed it." Some of the men looked at him in surprise. Some even opened their mouths like they were about to argue. But then others chimed in to agree with the first speaker. They came up with more details. They repeated these to each other and all chimed in, adding flourishes, reminding each other of things that had never happened. When they got home, they told the story to the ones left behind: the women and children and old men. The wolf had charged them. They had killed it heroically. A girl had been found dead, killed by the wolf. They figured out that she'd brought the wolf because she'd been having sex out in the woods with every man who wanted her, and the smell of her, the corruption of her, had drawn the beast to their village.

A celebration was held. The men were heroes. And after that, whenever any girls or women of the village disappeared or turned up dead among the crags with bruises around the neck or stab wounds low in the belly, the men looked at each other uneasily and said, "Must have been a wolf."

Callahan stood abruptly and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Well. She wasn't just living with the Karth. She was fighting with them, actually. That's how she knows Koslan. He taught her to use a gun."

Well, that was news. "Interesting." 

"Did you know about it?" Callahan demanded. "Did she tell you already?" 

Cabrese was nonplussed. Not by the revelation but by how quickly Morjo had opened up to Callahan. He'd been upstaged, and found it irritating. "I didn't know, but I'm not surprised. And it explains why she ended up at Marchev." 

"Yeah. Well. It was a surprise to me," said Callahan darkly. 

Cabrese considered saying, _I warned you during your CDD. I told you she had secrets._ "This is a good thing for you and her and the company. It makes her valuable. She'll know about weapons, defenses, tactics, hideouts. Quentin will be ecstatic. How do you plan to approach her?" 

Instead he thought of how good Angel was looking - like his sister's son who had gone into the marines 

Callahan thinks of the burned corpses Simontov had showed him. She was loyal to bad people. He wished he could explain that, but he didn't want to alienate her. Not when she was providing such good information. 

He watched her straighten. She stared straight ahead like a perfect soldier. "Yes, ma'am." 

"Tomorrow morning, we'll stay out an extra hour to make up for cutting things short tonight. I'll call the language building to let them know you'll be late." 

"Yes, ma'am." 

The exchange put Callahan in mind of his sister's oldest son. The boy had left for the marines at eighteen - theoretically by his own choice, though with the strong encouragement of the county judge. He had left as a scraggly-bearded kid with a penchant for pot and petty theft, and returned from boot camp with his back straight and his buttons shined, speaking about corps and country as if he had stepped out of a recruiting poster. 


End file.
